


6 Avengers And A Baby

by itsallAvengers



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Avengers Family, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, Human Experimentation, Hurt Peter Parker, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Peter Parker, M/M, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Avengers, Protective Tony Stark, Steve Rogers is..... less so, Superfamily, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark is Good With Kids, but he is trying, i love that that is a tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2019-11-16 06:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 48,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18088883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsallAvengers/pseuds/itsallAvengers
Summary: Aliens? Easy. Invasions? No problem. The Avengers are the most capable people in America, and they can handle anything life throws at them. But then life decides to throw them a baby, left at the door of the Avengers Tower at three in the morning and- well. That one iscertainlya scenario they haven't trained for





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work that I'm posting via my kofi through a goal-by-goal process, and you can find out more about how to unlock chapters by visiting my page, but I thought I'd just post the whole thing here in order to make it easier for people to access!

Someone had left him on the doorstep of the tower. 

The fucking  _doorstep_ , in the early weeks of a freezing spring. Tony could still hardly get over it- how could anyone fucking do that to a baby? It was goddamn lucky that he had JARVIS to inform him as soon as the little basket had been dropped off, or he didn't even want to think about what could have happened.

As soon as he'd gone down and picked it up in the armor (because people left weird shit outside the doorsteps of the Avengers tower, and Tony always practiced health & safety in those instances), he'd called a meeting immediately, completely gobsmacked. Most of the team had been asleep, seeing as it was three in the morning. Tony himself had been getting ready to pack up and head to bed, curl into Steve and have his usual battle for a little bit of blanket that the goddamn supersoldier always loved to hog.

 _I can't keep him,_  the note attached to the basket had said, _he's one of you._

And now, here they all were. Five Avengers in their pajamas, all staring in disbelief at the small baby boy in his arms, sleeping soundly.

"Okay, so I'm not the only one who's seeing this, right?" Clint blurted, pointing a finger at the small mass cradled in Tony's arms, "there is definitely a baby person there."

"It appears so," Thor said, cocking his head, "Tony, not to be rude, but, uh- what the fuck?"

Tony shrugged helplessly, shuffling the tiny thing around a fraction. "Someone left him at the door ten minutes ago," Tony said, keeping his voice quiet. He knew what babies sounded like when they screamed. He did not want that right now. "I tried to trace them, but they didn't pass any of my cameras. They just... dumped him and left."

Steve was staring at the baby like it was a bomb about to go off. He hadn't said a word. Natasha stepped forward, her hair loose and limp around her neck. She tilted her head and squinted. "Did they leave anything else?"

"A note," he responded, and Natasha's eyes encouraged him to explain further, "said: 'I can't keep him, he's one of you'. "

"What the damn hell is that supposed to mean?" Bruce blurted, before his eyes widened and he turned to everyone else. "Oh My god- you don't think he could be...  _related_ , do you?"

Everyone froze, and Natasha raised her hands. "Well it's not mine," she told them all drily. "Any of you remember who you were banging nine months ago?"

Immediately, Steve pointed to Tony and Tony nodded back over to Steve.  "We're both out," Steve said firmly, "so if it's anyone's, it's Clint or Thor or Bruce."

"I haven't- uh- been with anyone for a while. Over a year now," Bruce said, cheeks tinting pink, "I'm very sure."

Thor and Clint turned to one another, both looking nervous. "I have," they said at the same time, before Thor clicked his fingers and grinned triumphantly.

"Wait!" He said, "nope, it's not mine. Nine months ago was in June, right? I was casually seeing another man back then, not a woman. Michael was great, but most certainly did not have the ability to get pregnant. I'm safe."

Clint paled, glancing over to the small baby. "Nope," he said, "no, that is not mine. No way. I always use protection. Always."

Tony looked down, cocking his head and trying to see a resemblance. The child had a thick head of hair already, curly and wild and chocolate brown. His nose was button-like, different to Clint's wonky potato one. Then again, he supposed it had been broken so many times that no one could know what it had looked like at the beginning. "It might not be a son," he tried, "nephew? Third cousin twice-removed?"

"I have no family either," Natasha said, her face carefully blank, "so this has nothing to do with me."

"Look," Steve said, stepping forward and seeming to break out of his little trance, his voice commanding and Captain-like, taking charge of the situation, "it doesn't matter whose it is for now. Clint, we can do a DNA test tomorrow. But we need to work out what to do with it. Can we give to- I don't know, SHIELD?" 

Everyone pulled a face. "God, no, we're not doing that," Tony said defensively, "this is a small human, not an agent. They're not going to be much use with him."

"Child services?" Bruce offered, but then Clint's brow furrowed in disdain and he shook his head. 

"Look, if it's ours in any way, I don't want the little guy being put into care," he told them all, "it's shitty and lonely in there. Babies need, like... love and stuff. Affection. Anyway, it could get out that we've put a kid into the system and then all hell will break loose."

"Track down the mother," Thor said, "we have the resources. Just give it back."

"nuh uh," Tony shook his head vehemently, glancing down once more as the baby stirred a little bit, "she left him here, in the cold, out in the streets of fucking New York. She's not getting him back now."

"Tony, he's not our responsibility- we can take her back and then guide her toward some of the better decisions she can make, give her more options than just dropping him at the feet of some superheroes," Steve tried, but Tony shook his head again, lip curling in distaste.

"We have a duty of care, Steve," he snapped, "and this is a helpless baby. He's damned well our responsibility now." He sighed and then slowly lowered himself onto the couch, swallowing nervously. His own words settled some sense of enormity onto the situation they'd just been dropped into. This was a very small child in his arms, who couldn't talk or communicate or probably even walk yet. And none of them had any idea about what to do with him. 

But Tony knew that he sure as well was not giving him back to the person who'd left him there. Not a chance. 

"Okay, here's an idea," Natasha said after a few seconds of heavy silence, her eyes analyzing the baby. Better than Steve's  _ **'danger threat danger threat danger danger threat'**_ stare, but still a little too clinical for Tony's liking. "We keep him here overnight. Do some DNA tests, see if it's really Clint's. Work out our options, and what we are going to do with him. Maybe call a few people and see if there is anywhere we could put him that would be safe for him and relatively hassle-free for us."

They all looked at one another, nodding at the evaluation. That seemed sound. They could deal with a very small, very vulnerable human for 24 hours or so, right? They'd saved the universe before. This was small potatoes, really. "Where are we gonna put him?" Thor asked, folding his arms, "I don't think he should be left in his own room."

Another round of looks flew around the room, these ones a tad more uncomfortable. No one particularly fancied the responsibility of that, and kids were known to be...  _loud_ , when they woke up and felt hungry or needed to poop or whatever it was that babies did in the night.

"I vote Tony and Steve," Clint said, and Steve shot him a mutinous glare, "two superheroes are better than one, and their room is probably, like, homely, yeah? Nice happy family and stuff."

Tony blushed, beginning to smile- right up until he heard Steve's voice snap at the archer. "Don't be stupid, Clint."

Oh. Alright then. Tony looked down at the baby with a small frown and a disappointed little clenching in his heart, fingers brushing gently at the blankets wrapped around him. Honestly, he wasn't even sure if the kid was a boy. He'd just assumed from the blue blanket with rockets on it.

God, this was weird. 

"Yeah, that's probably best," everyone said, all of them determined not to be saddled with the responsibility. Tony rolled his eyes, looking over at Steve for confirmation. The man looked like he was swallowing cement, but eventually he just sighed and shrugged in defeat. 

"Right," he said tightly, "yeah, sure, we can deal with it for the night." He looked dubiously over to the bundled baby in Tony's arms, taking a deep breath and straightening his back. "How hard can it be?"

"Oh, those are some famous last words," Bruce said with a small grin, patting Steve on the shoulder before backing up. "I'll be up early so we can get started on the DNA testing. For now, I think that everyone should get back to bed. It's late."

There was a round of murmured agreement, and Tony stood back up again gently, walking over to Steve and sharing an apprehensive look. "Right," he said with a swallow, "back to bed for us, I guess."

"We don't have a cot," Steve said, fingers flexing against his side before lifting, just a little, as if he wanted to touch the kid. But a second later he thought better of it, and then let his hand drop again. 

Tony just shrugged. "He can sleep in the bed with us, right?"

But Steve shook his head rapidly. "No, no, we can't do that. You wriggle in your sleep, and I'm heavy. We could accidentally... squish it." 

Oh God, that was true. So many things to think about that Tony had never even considered. This... this was definitely not what he'd been wanting to spend his brain-power on tonight, that was for sure. He looked around the now-empty common room, hoping for an answer. "Uh, we could shove the couch right up to the bedside and then put him on that? That way he won't accidentally roll off."

Steve nodded wordlessly, starting to walk off in the direction of their quarters once more. His whole body was stiff and tense, clearly unhappy with the situation. Tony couldn't help but feel a little  ~~hurt~~ annoyed at it- Tony wasn't exactly leaping for joy at this development either, but it wasn't the end of the goddamn world. Did kids really make Steve that uncomfortable? Or was it just the idea of a kid in the room with him and Tony? It seemed like it could be a gateway for some conversations about future plans, potentially, but... well, it didn't have to be weird. And- and they'd been together for three years now; was the concept of a child being there really  _that strange_? 

Tony shook his head and just walked quietly with Steve, holding the baby as carefully as he could until they eventually both slipped into their room a minute later. Steve got to work with setting up the couch, while Tony softly commanded JARVIS to order foods that were suitable for babies to the tower for the morning. He'd probably need formula too, right? He put it on the order.

Steve quietly informed Tony it was ready, and Tony looked back up. Steve appeared to have gone to all the effort of dragging the couch around the room in order to put it on Tony's side, as opposed to the much closer side that belonged to Steve. He didn't mention it, though. Just nodded and then walked over in the darkness, very gently placing the child down against the soft pillows of the couch. He winced when the little boy's hands twitched and his face stirred, but luckily he didn't wake up. Tony sighed in relief, slipping his hands away. As he did so, the blankets that had previously been swaddling him slipped away, exposing the child's little sleep-suit and a yellow stickynote that had been placed over his chest. Tony frowned, plucking it off. 

"Huh," he huffed quietly, glancing back down with a cocked head, "Peter Parker."

"What?" Steve said from the bed, shuffling around to look over at them. Tony held up the sticky note and raised an eyebrow. 

"Well, we've already reached one developmental milestone tonight," he said as he slipped into bed next to Steve and handed him the note, "seems that we've got a name."


	2. Chapter 2

Tony was used to not sleeping. It kind of came with the job, and his brain took a while just to shut off on a good day, so more often than not Tony would just crash whenever he could, sleep schedule be damned.  
  
What Tony was not used to, however, was sleeping peacefully and then being woken up by a high-pitched, perpetual screaming noise to his immediate right. That was something he could firmly say he'd never had to deal with in his life before.  
  
With a wince and a muffled curse, he sat up on his elbows and looked to the source of the noise. On the couch, the baby was wriggling and squirming, face scrunched in discomfort as he fisted his hands and bawled his eyes out. It was loud and piercing and it sounded like the damn kid was dying. He sat up straighter, feeling as Steve did the same on his other side. "What the fuck?" He slurred, still halfway between conscious and asleep.   
  
"Baby's awake," Tony said wearily, shuffling sideways and then leaning down to pick the little guy up, "you don't think he's gonna puke on me, do you?"  
  
Steve made a face and looked at it through a wince as Peter continued to scream. Tony attempted to simply rock him back to sleep like he'd seen in movies before, but either he was doing it wrong or that simply wasn't what Peter needed, because five minutes passed without what seemed like a single pause in the baby's cries. Tony started to develop new earplugs for parents in his head. They'd probably be a hit.  
  
"What do we do?" Steve hissed, his frown deep. He was still looking at Peter as if he was seconds away from exploding. "Do we even know how old he is? How much food he needs? God, I knew this was a bad idea- what if he wants... like, breast milk or something? Do we have any of that?"  
  
Tony stared at him for a good few seconds. "Yeah, sweetheart, just give me a second and I'll whip my tits out- oh, wait. Of course we don't have breastmilk, Steve, Jesus Christ-"  
  
"Alright, alright, I was just asking!" Steve sighed and then stood up off the bed, running a hand through his hair. "We should get Bruce."  
  
Peter writhed in Tony's arms, and he pulled another face as he tried to settle him with gentle noises that did absolutely nothing. "Bruce can't do shit, he's not a pediatrician," Tony stood off the bed as well, turning to face Steve with the squirming mass tucked against his chest. "Look, can you hold him for a second? I have no idea what I'm doing-"  
  
"Nuh uh," Steve raised his hands and backed away, eyes wide, "you're doing fine. I- uh- I'll go get some soft foods. Banana? That should be okay, right? And- uh, water? See if that'll help, just give me a minute-" and like a flash, Steve had run from the room, shutting the door quietly behind him and leaving Tony staring bewilderedly at the space Steve had left. For a man who could go toe to toe with a monster and not break a sweat, he sure was terrified of a six-month-old baby.  
  
Tony sighed, looking down at the kid. "Please shut up," he said in his nicest voice, "please please  _please?_ Come on, big guy, I know it's been a long day for you, but we're trying our best here. Steve's even gone to get you some food! Yummy bananas, you'll love them, right?"  
  
In response, Peter screamed harder, his gummy mouth opened wide in displeasure. Tony winced and leaned back against the wall. "Well that's a little rude," he mumbled, feeling the beginnings of a headache start to pierce through his brain. Why were babies  _so loud?_  
  
  
Steve came back five minutes later with a plate of banana slices and a water bottle- but no matter how hard they both attempted to wrangle some of the food into the little boy's mouth, he solidly refused to comply. By the twenty-minute mark, Tony was ready to start banging his head against the wall, and it seemed Steve was three seconds away from calling homeland security on the baby. How did parents do this shit? Robots, Tony could understand. They had their own language, they were logical beings with set commands and needs. This little thing in his arms? Nothing. Screaming was not a language! How were they supposed to communicate with nothing but loud-pitched wailing noises?  
  
"Do something," he looked at Steve in the end, his face leaving no room for excuses, "you're Captain America, you survived fifty years in the Arctic, nothing can defeat you. Please, for the love of God,  _do something."_  
  
Steve looked at him helplessly, then glanced at the baby. His mouth opened and shut a few times, and Tony was about to admit defeat and wake Bruce when, without much warning, Steve started to sing.   
  
Tony stared at him, mouth falling open as Steve hummed something Tony had never heard before, with words that sounded like complete gibberish. Tony knew a lot of languages, but never in his life had he come across anything like what Steve was saying. His voice was soft and wavering, not particularly great, but he could carry a tune.  
  
 _"A bhean úd thíos, Air bhruach an tsrutháin,"_  he sang, nodding his head back and forth as he looked at Peter intently,  _"Seothu leo, seothu leo, An dtuigeann tusa fáth mo ghearáin? Seothu leo, seothu leo,"_  
  
He paused for a fraction of a second, and then, miraculously, Peter's crying wavered, just a little bit as he opened his eyes and looked up at Steve curiously. Tony's mouth dropped further, and he stared at Steve. The other man looked back up like a rabbit caught in the headlights, before Tony gestured wildly for him to continue with a rapid move of his hand.   
  
 _"S'e bliain is lá inniu ó fuadaíodh mé om leannán, Seothu leo, seothu leo,"_  Steve said in his foreign language, swallowing nervously and then running a hand through his hair, apparently trying to recall the lyrics, "uhhhhh... oh!  _Is go rugadh isteach mé I lios a cnocáin, Seothu leo, seothu leo."_  
  
By that point in whatever lullaby it was that Steve was reciting, Peter had gone almost completely silent, his cries reducing to a few muffled whimpers that eventually faded into nothing at all, his eyes locked on with Steve as he sang. Tony could admit, he was doing much the same. Steve  _never_ sang- when he did, it was usually just humming old war songs or those abominable pop tunes that played nonstop on the radio. This- this was different. It sounded... ethereal, almost. Like it had been around since the beginning of time.   
  
As Steve continued to sing to him, Peter relaxed a little in Tony's arms, head drooping onto Tony's chest as he swayed them both gently and remained as quiet as he could. He listened almost as intently to Steve as Peter was, hypnotized by the strange language. He supposed that was the point of a lullaby, after all.   
  
It took another two minutes, but finally,  _finally_ , Peter's eyes drooped and he fell back to sleep. Steve was the one who pointed it out, nodding over to Peter and then fading out into a hum, which then became silence. Blissful, beautiful silence.  
  
Tony shut his eyes and resisted the urge to groan with happiness. "Oh thank God," he murmured, "thank fucking God, Steve, you are a genius and I love you."  
  
Steve laughed gently, cheeks flushed pink as they both shuffled silently back to bed. With the care of someone handling a petri dish full of lethal bacteria, Tony delicately placed the sleeping baby back onto the couch cushions, tucking a blanket around his small body and then sitting back. He turned to Steve with an exhausted smile. "Good job," he commended, "Cap to the rescue, just like I said, see?"  
  
Steve was still blushing, and he shook his head as he wrapped his hand around Tony's waist and pulled him in. "I only sang to him," he mumbled, "you probably would have done it better."  
  
"What was it?" Tony whispered, looking up at him, "Irish?"  
  
Steve nodded. "Ma used to sing it to me when I was sick," he explained, "old Gaelic lullaby. I thought I might as well try it."  
  
Tony smiled, shutting his eyes and then running his fingers over his own forehead. His ears were still goddamn ringing. "Tomorrow he can sleep with Clint," he muttered, "he's the prime suspect anyway, don't see why we should get lugged with the crying."  
  
Steve nodded in agreement and snuggled down further. "If all goes to plan, there won't have to be a tomorrow," he said, before kissing Tony's forehead and running his hands up and down Tony's arms, "let's try get some sleep before he wakes up again."  
  
Tony could definitely get on board with that idea, and two seconds later, he was clocked out in Steve's arms, hoping against hope that Steve was wrong and that deafening screaming would not be a problem for the rest of the night.  
  
  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
  
It was.  
  
It was a very large problem. It was a very large problem that happened at four different intervals throughout the night.   
  
By the time the morning came around, Steve and Tony had had about three hours of sleep. When he closed his eyes he could hear Peter wailing. Didn't help that Steve had refused to even hold him once, and so Tony had been nearest to the racket the whole damned time.   
  
At about 7, he gathered Peter, who was already awake and sat playing contentedly with Steve's gloves, up in his arms and then marched him up to the communal floor. He told Steve to get Clint, and then plopped Peter down on the counter next to the coffee-maker. He glared at the child and Peter looked back at him, shooting him a gummy smile. For a creature who had spent the entire night bawling his eyes out, he seemed to be remarkably jolly now. Tony poked him gently yet accusingly in the chest. "I'm onto you," he warned, "giving me your cute face, pretending you're a little angel. Well it won't fool me. I haven't forgotten last night, you know. I know you're a menace."  
  
Peter gurgled in response, fat little legs poking Tony's midsection. Still glaring suspiciously, Tony set the coffee maker to work, one hand keeping Peter from tumbling off the counter as the other grabbed for his mug. He needed a damn big caffeine fix this morning.   
  
"Hey hey hey, why the frog-marching?" Tony glanced behind him and spotted Clint, looking rather confused as Steve pushed him into the room firmly. When he set his eyes on Tony and the kid, he frowned. "You're up early," he said.  
  
Tony pulled a face. "Oh, I wonder why?" He picked Peter up and slotted him against his hip, walking over to the two of them, "perhaps because your potential son was screaming the entire night and now I can't close my eyes without getting flashbacks? Maybe that's why."  
  
Clint put his hands up. "Whoah now, innocent until proven guilty! We don't know that he's mine yet."  
  
"He's loud enough to be," Steve said mutinously, stifling a yawn, "anyway, we've made the executive decision that you're on babysitting duty today. Tony's got work and I've got, uh- stuff. Captain America Stuff." He shrugged and clapped Clint on the shoulder as Tony hoisted the baby up and then placed him in Clint's arms with a sweet smile. Peter turned to look at him as Tony stepped away, before glancing over to Clint with wide eyes.  
  
Then he started to cry again.   
  
Clint's face fell. "Oh no." He turned back to Tony, who was now at the counter pouring out a coffee, "no, don't do this. I don't know how babies work!"  
  
"Neither do we, Barton," Tony waved a hand and then sighed, glancing at the little baby in Clint's arms. His hands were extended, reaching out for Tony in distress. But Tony really did have work, and anyway... it was just some kid. Hardly anything to do with Tony at all, really. "But I bought a load of stuff, and JARVIS has had it delivered into the hallway. There's diapers and a cot and a seat and all that shit, so you have all the equipment. I suggest making him some breakfast and giving him some formula so he doesn't starve in our care. Also," he turned and shot Clint his best smile, "he'll probably need his diaper changing at some point during the day. You have fun with that."  
  
Clint paled, turning to Steve and then trying to push the crying baby toward him. "I'm begging you, don't do this. I'm barely an adult myself. I haven't eaten a vegetable in three weeks."  
  
"That's....  _so_ bad, Clint, you really should consider changing your diet. And possibly getting tested for rickets," Steve frowned and backed up, putting his hands behind his back. Tony side-eyed him. He was pretty certain Steve hadn't even touched Peter once. "But if you're the dad, then Peter's your responsibility now. And if he's not- well, you were the one who said we shouldn't call social services."  
  
"Oh, so what, you guys named him?" Clint raised an eyebrow and looked down at the boy, rocking him a little jerkily. Tony winced. "Look, you're clearly the parental figures here-"  
  
"Shut up, that's the name he was given by his original owners," Steve snapped before he could finish, "we didn't see it until the blankets came off."  
  
Tony sighed, downing his coffee in one before slamming it onto the counter and checking his watch. Bruce had said he'd be up to begin the tests at eight. Clint could survive for an hour with a small child, right? Tony didn't need to worry. Hell, Tony would probably be more of a risk to Peter than Clint was. He wasn't exactly a figurehead of responsibility himself. "Look, I actually do have to get to work," he said, turning back around to face them and folding his arms. "Steve, make sure Clint doesn't try and feed him Cheetos and soda for breakfast. Clint, if you sing to him, he likes that. Or just unwrap some of the boxes in the hall and see if some of the toys can distract him. Bruce'll come down soon, and then we can find out if he really is yours." He rubbed a hand over his face and tried to untangle some of his curls with a wince. "I have to get ready. I'll see you all when I get back."  
  
He grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and chewed on it as he walked away, watching Peter while Peter watched him, hands still reaching out, trying to grab. It was only because Tony was the one who'd actually held him since he'd arrived here, though. Babies probably just... imprinted, or something, What the hell did Tony know?  
  
He stopped briefly at Clint's side, unaware he'd even moved in that direction until he was booping Peter gently on the nose. "Be good, wretch," he muttered, not looking at Clint as the man sniggered, "I'll see you all this evening."  
  
And then, not looking back, he swiftly exited the room.  
  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
  
His day at Stark Industries was, admittedly, not the most productive he'd ever been.  
  
He spent most of it thinking about how everyone was getting on at home; whether the tests had been done and if Steve had actually entered the same room as Peter since Tony had left. He had to admit, he couldn't work out quite what Steve's issue was. Steve had never been that uncomfortable around babies before this. Although, that being said- when had Tony ever seen Steve handling a baby before? Tony knew he himself did it often. Thor loved to take pictures with them. Hell, even Natasha had been thrust one before, and although slightly stiff and awkward, she'd done okay with them.  
  
Steve? Tony didn't think he'd  _ever_ seen Steve hold one. Which was weird, considering the nature of their jobs.  
  
Maybe he just didn't like them. Which was fine. Tony didn't either- not really. They were too loud. Too needy. Tony liked to have intellectual conversations with his peers, not feed them mushed up banana bits. Kids were all gross and messy. Steve clearly didn't want anything to do with them either, and it seemed the very thought of him and Tony being parental figures was completely absurd to him too. Which was fine by Tony. Families would probably be a disaster, if he was involved, let's be honest.  
  
  
  
By the time he arrived back home that evening, he had done a grand total of three files altogether and had thought pretty much exclusively about the situation back at the tower. He was almost certain that Pepper had considered driving the heel of her shoe into his eye at least once, but he'd make it up to her once all this was over.  
  
Stepping out of the car and into the elevator, he undid his tie from around his neck and then pushed his sleeves up to his forearms, running through his to-do list. The results would take a little while to come through, but hopefully they would know by the end of the night, and so could call social services or... whatever it was Clint would want to do if it turned out he was the dad. Tony wasn't sure- it wasn't as if Clint would keep him, surely? Then again, what did Tony know? maybe Clint was a paternal guy. Maybe he'd grow into it.  
  
Stepping out onto the common floor five minutes later, he wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting. Mayhem, perhaps. That was closer to what he'd been envisioning, if he was being honest. However, the scene that he took in seemed remarkably serene and somewhat disturbing. Mainly because Tony could see the Black Widow in her full uniform, sat on her belly and looking up at their giant HD TV screen as it played an episode of what appeared to be Peppa Pig.  
  
He paused. Natasha wasn't the only one there. Peter was sat on her left, fiddling contentedly with something in his hands as he looked in fascination at the screen, and Clint was on the other side, a box of cereal in hand as he too watched Peppa Pig go about her day. Clint was back in his pajamas- or maybe he hadn't even changed in the first place.  
  
Tony dropped his bag at the door. "This looks cozy," he declared, walking further in.  
  
Natasha grunted, not taking her eyes off the screen as she waved at him half-heartedly. "Peter cried for two hours until we turned this on," she said, "then he shut up. This is where we've been for the whole afternoon."  
  
"It's evening."  
  
She grunted again. "Time means nothing here."  
  
Well, Tony couldn't argue with that. "You fed him?" He asked, just in case. Clint turned to him and shot him a dry look.  
  
"No, we just thought he could make himself a sandwich or something, you know?"  
  
Tony chose to ignore that, instead sitting apprehensively on the arm of the couch. He didn't intend to stay here long. But Peter turned to him when he heard the voice, his face breaking out into a toothless smile as he clapped his podgy hands together uncoordinatedly. He held out his arms.  
  
Tony looked at him warily. Natasha glanced over, eyebrows raised. "If you don't pick him up, he's gonna start screaming."  
  
Fair point. Tony rolled his eyes and then bent down, hands going under those fat little arms as he lifted Peter up and then raised his eyebrows at the boy. "You know how much work I got done today?" He asked solemnly, giving the baby his most disappointed look as he made a circle with his fingers. "Zero. Nothing. That's your fault, you good-for-nothing vagabond."  
  
Peter gurgled in delight, fisting a hand into Tony's hair and tugging. He winced. "Ow, see? Why do you do that? What does that achieve?"  
  
"He tried to bite me earlier," Clint called out, "he's got like, two teeth, but it still hurt. I think he thinks we're food."  
  
Tony frowned, watching Peppa Pig as she and her friend tried to learn how to whistle on the screen. "Is Steve around?" He asked, hearing their negative grunts this time.  
  
“Gym,” Natasha said, as Clint followed on with, “all day.”  
  
Tony looked between the two of them, and then at Peter. It seemed they were more enthralled by the cartoon than the baby was. “I feel like this isn’t very healthy,” he told them, to which they still did not turn around, “how many episodes of this trash have you watched?”  
  
Two shrugs and a noncommitted grunt this time. “Hundred?” Natasha guessed, “Maybe more.”  
  
Tony, with a lack of anything to say, simply pulled a face and then stood up again, going over to the kitchen in the other room with Peter still tucked into his arm. The baby seemed to be pretty happy, letting off little gurgles and babbles of nonsensical noises now and then as Tony walked them through into the other room. He noticed that a highchair had been set up, and so popped Peter’s butt down on it before going about making two coffees. “How was your day, squirt?” He asked wearily, back turned as he grabbed his and Steve’s mugs, “anything interesting happen? You met Thor yet? He’s fun. Just don’t let him try and convince you into holding his hammer. It’s just embarrassing.”  
  
He paused, looking up with a frown, “although I suppose you would be able to hold it. You’re all… pure and stuff, right? Babies haven’t committed atrocities yet- at least I don’t think you have.” He turned, eyeing Peter up suspiciously. “Although, now I think about it, that debacle last night is quite enough to make you unworthy.”  
  
Peter banged his hands on the table, the thing he was holding making a sharp metallic clang as it hit. Tony looked at it curiously, before- “NATASHA,  _DID YOU GIVE THE BABY YOUR LETHAL WEAPON TO PLAY WITH?”_  
  
He lurched forward, hand reaching out for the Widow’s Bite in Peter’s hand before the kid could goddamn electrocute himself, but Natasha shouted back at him. “IT’S FINE, I DEWEAPONIZED IT. HE LIKED IT BECAUSE IT WAS SHINY.”  
  
Tony froze, glaring at Natasha from across the room. Peter was eyeing him curiously, still banging at the table. Tony looked at him, unimpressed. “Of all the toys I bought you,” he started, “and you decide to take fancy to the thing that could kill you? Of course you do. It’s not like those thirty-goddamn-dollar rattles are interesting, is it-“  
  
“Who are you talking to?” Tony turned, spotting Steve as he came through the doors. He was drenched in a sheen of sweat, bottle in one hand and towel in the other. Tony blushed, tipping out the coffee into their mugs separately.  
  
“Peter,” he said casually, “and before you ask, the thing in his hand is deweaponized. Apparently.”  
  
Steve looked, eyes going wide for a minute as he too lurched forward on instinct, before stopping himself and merely blinking in confusion. Tony took the opportunity to shove the mug of coffee into his hands, which he accepted in thanks. Bruce walked in a second later, and the words on Tony’s lips died as he took in Bruce’s face. “News?” He asked instead, cocking his head.  
  
Bruce nodded, shuffling sideways so Thor could also enter the room. His eyes went immediately to Peter, who he beamed at with the wattage of a million suns and then made grabby hands for. Tony, just happy to have two hands to hold his coffee with, let him, and soon Thor was making Peter squeal with laughter as he was thrown high into the air and caught smoothly by the God.  
  
They called Clint and Natasha in, which took a bit of wrangling, but eventually they were all in the kitchen. Clint looked wary again, hands working nervously against his legs. “So,” he began, “not mine, right?”  
  
Bruce paused for drama, because he was an asshole like that, but then he shook his head and Clint breathed a huge sigh of relief, sagging against Natasha who immediately shoved him off. “Not yours,” he confirmed, “whatever they meant in the letter, it wasn’t that.”  
  
Thor stopped throwing Peter up, instead merely holding him with a small frown. “So what happens now?” He asked.  
  
Tony looked around the room, blowing out air and shrugging. “We have to hand him over to social services,” he said, looking at Clint’s twisted face and making a helpless gesture with his hands, “we don’t have any other options. We don’t know who this kid is, who he belongs to- whether he already has a family and a birth certificate or if he needs one. This is not our area of expertise, quite clearly.”  
  
Steve nodded. “It’s for the best,” he said firmly, glancing over at Peter as the kid poked Thor with the Widow’s Bite, watching in fascination as the skin turned white where he put the pressure.  
  
They all looked at one another, their faces dubious. But it was right and they knew it- Peter was just a stranger’s kid who’d been dumped at their doorstep, and they needed to do the right thing and put him somewhere he could be safely relocated.   
  
Clint’s face was tight, and he hunched in himself a little as he nodded. “Yeah, guess you’re right,” he said gruffly, “shall we call ‘em, then?”  
  
Tony checked his watch. “They probably won’t be able to come right now, it’s too late,” he said, “we’ll ring in the morning. That alright with everyone?”  
  
They all murmured their agreements, looking at Peter as he continued to prod Thor, oblivious to the decisions being made around him. Tony watched with a tight mouth and a deep frown- he knew that Peter didn’t belong to them, but… it felt wrong to just dump him somewhere again. He’d already had that happen to him once in the last 24 hours. But what choice did they have? It was for the best, he supposed.  
  
“I’m callin’ it a night,” Clint said abruptly, turning on his heel, “all this baby-talk has me exhausted.”  
  
Thor nodded his agreement, handing the baby over to Natasha, who was closest to him. “Me too,” he said, “I have to be gone by dawn tomorrow so I can get to Asgard in good time.” He bid them all goodnight and then sloped off, shoulders a little more slumped than usual.  
  
“I’ll head back to the lab,” Bruce said a little awkwardly, jerking a thumb behind him, and then Tony looked down in surprise as Natasha handed Peter over to him and began to follow Bruce.  
  
“Yeah,” she told them, “I, uh- don’t have an excuse. I just don’t want to have him in my room tonight.” And then she turned tail and swiftly walked away, not looking behind her as she hopped into the elevator. Tony and Steve looked at one another, faces creasing.  
  
“Did we just get lumped into the night-shift again?” Steve asked, glancing dubiously down at Peter, now sat comfortably in Tony’s grasp once more.  
  
Tony just sighed.   
  
  
  
  
_  
  
  
  
  
They didn’t get woken up that night, which was surprising. Peter decided that five in the morning was as good a time as any to rise and shine, however, which meant they did have an abominably early start. At least they’d had more than three hours of rest this time, though.  
  
Steve made a noise of discontent into Tony’s hair as Peter started to babble and bang his rattle in the cot, and Tony was quick to follow, blinking awake with a look of mild disgust on his face as his gaze fell upon the time. “I hate mornings,” he said dejectedly, sinking back into Steve’s arms, “how long do you think it’ll be before he starts crying?”  
  
Steve shrugged. “When he wants something, I assume,” he mumbled.  
  
“So imminently, then."  
  
Steve laughed, tilting his head down and then kissing Tony’s cheek. “Reminds me of someone,” he said in amusement, and Tony made an offended noise in the back of his throat.  
  
“I do not like the insinuation there at all,” Tony told him, even as his hands moved and curled around Steve’s neck, “make it up to me right now.”  
  
Steve’s mouth quirked up, and he rolled Tony easily onto his chest. “With pleasure,” he said, pulling Tony down for an easy kiss.  
  
They managed to make out for all of twenty seconds before Peter became bored and started to whine. With a deep sigh, Tony broke away and looked up, glaring daggers through the bars of the cot. “We are busy right now,” he tried, but Peter just looked at him with his dumb sad eyes that demanded attention, quite clearly uncaring of anything else that Tony and Steve may have been occupied with.  
  
He sighed and looked to Steve. “Your turn to change his diaper,” he said with a poke against Steve’s ribs, “and you’re not allowed to run away this time. Man up and wipe his butt like everyone else.”  
  
Steve’s smile dropped off, and he began to shake his head, but Tony wasn’t having it that time. He jumped out of bed at a record speed and headed to the bathroom, giving Steve a thumb’s up before locking the door firmly behind him. Whatever Steve’s problem with Peter was, he could sure as hell get over it, because Tony downright refused to do the changing for a second time when Steve hadn’t done it once.  
  
He brushed his teeth tiredly, slumping against the sink and checking the weather for the day as he spat and turned on the faucet. He didn’t have work that day, so he could get away without doing his beard, but he quickly took out the tweezers and plucked a few hairs off his eyebrows all the same, just for upkeep. He really needed to call Paul in, see if he could fit Tony in for another dye-  
  
“Tony?” Steve called out from the other room, voice starting small but becoming decidedly panicked the next time around. “Tony? Tony, come here, I don’t… Tony!”  
  
  
With a roll of his eyes and groan, Tony dropped the tweezers and stuck his head out of the door. “If this is just your way of trying to coerce me into helping you, then you’re shit outta lu-  _what the fuck?”_  
  
Across the room and sat on his ass helplessly, Steve’s head jerked up, eyes wide and horrified. “I didn’t even touch him,” he whispered, “he just… I was sat here trying to, to prepare myself, and then he grabbed my hand and- and now he’s stuck!” Steve lifted his hand, showing the splayed out palm that Peter’s fingers appeared to be sticking to as if glued in place. He was giggling to himself, clearly unfazed. “I don’t know what I did Tony! I was just sat here and now I… he’s stuck! I didn’t-”  
  
“Okay, calm down,” Tony raised his hands quickly and rushed over, dropping to his knees next to them and looking at Peter incredulously. He wasn’t even holding on, his fingertips were simply…. Stuck to Steve’s palm as Steve held it up in the air and hyperventilated in front of him. “Deep breaths, Steve. You did fine. I think… I think I just worked out what the person who left him meant, when they wrote ‘he’s one of you’.”  
  
Steve blinked rapidly, before the light dawned. He looked back down at Peter, whose legs had now also apparently attached themselves to Steve’s arm like Velcro. He was chewing his rattle, drool curling down his chin as he smiled up at Tony.  
  
“He’s enhanced,” they both said at the same time, and Tony sunk lower onto the floor as he gently began to try tugging Peter off Steve’s arm.  
  
God dammit. This definitely made things a hell of a lot more inconvenient.


	3. Chapter 3

It took them a good minute until they managed to persuade Peter to unstick himself from Steve’s arm using a shiny object and one of Tony’s most winning smiles. Once that had been achieved, they placed him safely back on the ground and stared at him, while Peter simply munched happily on his own hand and garbled a few more incomprehensible noises at them. Steve shuffled a few more paces back, as if afraid the small child may latch on again.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Tony asked dumbly, looking up at the other man and waving his hand, “do you think that’s all he’s capable of?”

Steve looked down warily at the child. “I have no idea. Are there… can we do tests or something? I mean—God, are we supposed to tell social services this? Do they even have a way to deal with this?”

Tony’s heart sank as he leaned forward and picked Peter up, tucking him into his arms with a small frown. He jigged the boy up and down, watching as a beam spread across his podgy cheeks. Steve sighed in front of him, and Tony looked back over. “This changes everything,” he declared solemnly, “Steve, we can’t give him over to social services. Not now.”

Steve blinked at him. “Then what the hell are we supposed to with him?” He said bewilderedly, “Tony, sweetheart, you have to be rational. That’s the only place for him—”

“Not like this it isn’t!” Tony argued, hearing as Peter began to whine a little bit in his arms as he reacted to their tense voices. He looked down and then made an effort to relax, keeping his voice calm. “Steve, they don’t know how to handle this. You’ve heard the horror stories about vulnerable kids getting paired off with abusive parents who can’t handle the fact their kids aren’t ‘normal’. We… there’s gotta be another way.”

Steve just looked at him, jaw tightening as he ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He turned his gaze down at Peter, cocking his head analytically. When Peter looked straight back at him, Steve’s gaze softened a little. His hand twitched, like he wanted to reach out again. But he didn’t. “Something feels off here,” he admitted quietly, eyes going back to Tony, “don’t you feel it too? These sorts of kids are rare. And X-genes usually don’t show until puberty. I’ve never heard of one this young- not unless it’s scientifically induced.

Tony paused. “What, you think he’s some sort of… experiment?” He asked. “If that were the case, why the hell would they bring him to us? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Tony, you’re holding a baby that someone dumped on your doorstep, and we’ve just found out that he can stick to us like glue. Nothing about this makes sense.”

Peter babbled then, apparently agreeing. They both huffed in amusement, glancing between one another and the baby in the middle of them. Tony sighed. “We should probably talk to the team,” he said in the end, getting to his feet, “this is somewhat of a development. I’m guessing that they’ll want to hear it. JARVIS, wake ‘em all up and tell them to meet us in the kitchen, will you?”

Steve nodded, falling into step with Tony and remaining silent through the walk down. His gaze was sharp, lost deep in thought, and Tony knew he was doing the same. Peter’s little trick had just changed everything, although the baby was completely oblivious to it. They couldn’t just hand him over to any normal old social services now, could they? It was… different, when a kid had powers like that. Tony hadn’t been lying about the horror stories- some parents brought them home just so they could try and train it out of them, or put them up for illegal fighting rings, or do God knows what. Of course, that was if he even ended up getting adopted at all. Sure, babies were the most popular choice amongst adoptive parents, but a baby that was enhanced? Those very rarely even got considered. People didn’t want to deal with the hassle.

Peter’s future was starting to look bleaker and bleaker by the second, and Tony had no Goddamn idea what to do about it.

By the time he and Steve had gotten down to the communal kitchen, Natasha and Thor were already there, and Bruce was trailing in with a yawn a pair of squinty eyes. “What’s the problem?” The man asked croakily, “and can’t it wait a few hours? The sun’s hardly even up yet.”

“No,” Steve said bluntly, “it’s about Peter.”

“I hate you, Tony,” Clint said from behind them, and both he and Steve rolled their eye simultaneously as the archer trudged into the room, “I do not get up anywhere close to this time unless the world is ending. What the hell is the problem?”

“Peter’s enhanced,” Steve told him, voice clipped, “that enough of a problem for you?”

The room fell into silence as all eyes turned on the small boy. Peter, feeling the attention shift toward him with a focused intensity, reared back a little into Tony’s shoulder and curled fingers around the fabric of his shirt nervously.

“What’s he got?” Natasha asked, cocking her head over to Steve. The man just shrugged, a little bewildered.

“Some sort of adhesive qualities to his skin, from what we can see,” Tony jumped in, and when the team all looked at him blankly, he waved a hand. “He stuck to Steve’s arm and wouldn’t let go.”

Clint snorted. “That’s God’s way of telling you off for not taking on any responsibility for him over the past two days,” he said with a cocked eyebrow, and Steve turned to him in irritation, mouth opening in a (pretty useless) attempt at defending himself, but Thor stepped in between them before anything could flare up and raised his hands.

“This is not about you two right now,” he told them sharply, “this is about Peter. What are we going to do now? Him being superhuman is going to change how social services take on his case, right?”

“Well, clearly social services is off the table for now until we expend all other options,” Bruce said, looking around the room, but Natasha and Steve both frowned, glancing at one another.

“You do realise that we can’t just keep him here, right?” Natasha asked, leaning forward, “we don’t have another choice. Social services are trained to deal with this-“

“Not when the children are enhanced, they’re not,” Bruce told her sharply, “they have a bad track record and you know it.”

Clint sighed, stepping forward and then taking Peter from Tony’s arms. He rolled his eyes and made an exaggerated face at the boy, who responded with what sounded almost like an affirmative noise. “Look, you adults go argue this out with one another, but I’m gonna get this little guy some breakfast and continue with Peppa Pig. Come on, chuckles, let’s go eat.”

Tony let Clint take him and then once his hands were empty, decided to fill them with a mug of coffee. He moved through the kitchen to the coffee maker, a frown etched into his face. “Natasha’s right,” he pointed out, “we can’t just keep him here. But another superhero group might be a little better equipped with dealing with a superhuman kid, if you get my drift.”

There was a moment of silence in the kitchen, nothing other than the faint sounds of Peppa Pig in the background as everyone stewed on his statement. It was Steve who got to it first. “Xavier,” he said, blinking in realisation, “of course. He’d know what to do about this, right?”

Tony shrugged and turned, looking at all of them. “Can’t hurt to try,” he said.

“The School was full to capacity, last I heard,” Natasha piped up, but Tony just waved a hand and turned back to the coffee machine, plucking his mug from the shelf.

“At the very least, he can tell us what to do with the kid, even if he can’t take him in.”

There was a murmuring of agreement around the room as everyone acknowledged the sound nature of the idea. Tony himself still didn’t entirely like the idea, although he wasn’t too sure why. Maybe just something about displacing the kid over and over sat wrong with him. Like Clint had said on the first day, babies needed stability, love. They needed stupid cuddles and someone to hold them, because they were at an age were affection was a necessity, not an option. Throwing him from place to place in an attempt to find a fit just felt wrong.

But what choice did they have, really? Like Natasha had said, they couldn’t fucking keep him. That was just absurd.

“Sir,” JARVIS called out into the room, pulling Tony’s gaze away from the mug and up to the ceiling, “a police report has just broken that I think could pertain to this case at hand.”

Tony looked back, over to Steve with a wary face. Police reports were rarely good news, especially when it had things to do with small and vulnerable babies. He spun his finger. “Pull it up, J.”

Everyone gravitated toward the table, where a holographic screen popped up, showing a rather graphic image of what was a very dead woman, two gunshots to her chest, sat splayed out in a pool of her own blood in a bathroom. Tony winced. “Who is this?”

“They have yet to find a name,” JARVIS told them all, “but since the first night in which Peter was left on the door of the tower, I have been monitoring the internet in an attempt to find a match with the partial facial scan I managed to get on her. This… appears to be an 89% match. She checked into a hotel five minutes away from the tower on the same night that the child was dropped here.”

There was a long silence, as all of them stared. Across the table, Natasha’s back straightened. “Could be coincidence,” Bruce tried, but everyone shook their heads immediately.

“The universe is rarely that lazy,” Thor told him, eyes on the corpse in front of him. His face was pinched. “You think this is his mother?”

Tony threw up his hands, looking over Natasha’s shoulder and into the living area where Clint had Peter settled on his lap, feeding him a bowl of something or another. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “could be. But this wasn’t a suicide. Someone came to take her out.”

“Someone was looking for the kid,” Steve said seriously, and once more, the room fell into silence as everyone processed it. Tony looked over to Steve, paling a little. The words Steve had said earlier resonated back into his head:  _these sorts of kids are rare. Scientifically induced. Something seems off here._

Shit.

“Let’s look at what we know,” Natasha began calmly, resting her hands flat against the table and eyeing them all. “48 hours ago, someone, most likely this woman, dropped Peter on our door. We don’t know why, or how she’s related to him. This morning, we find out that he’s enhanced, and also that she’s dead. A targeted hit.” She took in a breath, shutting her eyes for a moment. “So, we can infer that either this woman already knew she was being hunted, and left him with us before Peter could get caught in the crossfire, or she was hunted  _because_ of the fact that she left him with us.”

The team all glanced back and forth between one another, and Tony bit his lip nervously as he once more watched Peter across the penthouse floor whilst the child cackled obliviously over a game of peek-a-boo with Clint. He had an ominous feeling sat in the bottom of his gut, and he resisted the urge to walk over and take the little boy back into his arms. That wasn’t going to make him any damn safer.

“The question is: who’s the hunter?” Steve folded his arms and looked around the room in question, but all he got back were blank and oblivious faces. In the corner of the room, some toast popped up, and was duly ignored. None of them held onto the grumpy sleepiness of earlier- not now they were in danger mode.

“Uhhh, guys?” Clint called out from across the Penthouse, and everyone turned to him in question. He held up his arm, now with a Peter attached to the back of it. “He’s latched on again. How do you get him off?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “He’ll come down when he’s good and ready. Just give him a distraction or something, I dunno.” Peter’s head turned to look at Tony, and Tony couldn’t resist pulling a face at the kid, watching with a grin as the boy cackled in a way that only babies ever did- loud and carefree and without a single weight upon his tiny little shoulders.

He was too young to be in this kind of shit already, dammit. He couldn’t even  _walk_ yet, and someone was already trying to hunt him down.

“Sir,” JARVIS said once again, and the whole team looked automatically to the ceiling, “it appears social services have arrived at the tower and are requesting entry into the penthouse.”

Tony pulled another face, this one not nearly as amusing as he glared in exasperation at the team around him. They all turned to him and pulled the same face, Thor throwing up his hands and opening his mouth to say something. Tony, however, got there first. “Goddamn it, which one of you called them already? Shit, we can’t let them take him yet, he’s at risk. Someone hold them off—”

“Ah, it appears the receptionist has already given them entry to the elevator,” JARVIS told them apologetically, “I could stop it if you wish?”

“Yes, do that,” Tony snapped, before Natasha said “no, that’s going to be too suspicious. We don’t want them calling the cops or getting any more involved than they already are. We’re gonna have to spin a story- tell them the mother came back or something. How much information did they get on the phonecall?”

Everyone looked at one another. “Who called them?” Steve asked, “it wasn’t me.”

“Not me either,” Tony said, folding his arms and looking around the kitchen.

Natasha frowned. “I didn’t,” she said, while Bruce and Thor shook their heads too. They all turned their heads to the living room on the other side of the penthouse, eyes narrowing. “CLINT!” Natasha yelled in irritation.

Clint’s head turned. “What?” He looked warily at the group of faces staring him down. “Have I fucked up?”

“I dunno, depends on how much you gave away to Social Services when you called them,” Bruce told him with a tight mouth, “because they’re on their way up as we speak, but in the light of some new information, it turns out that handing him over right now would be a very bad idea.”

Clint pulled a face, shifting Peter on his lap. “I didn’t call them,” he said, and everyone stilled in their seats.

Well. That certainly didn’t bode well. If Clint or Tony or Steve or Natasha or Bruce or Thor didn’t call them, then it begged one rather obvious question: Who the fuck did?  
Tony looked slowly around the room, hearing Clint stand up from the couch, having apparently sensed the growing tension around him. “Take Peter to your floor, Clint,” he ordered, pointing a finger, “now, quickly, before they get up here.”

“How did they find out?” Thor moved over to Tony in concern as Clint nodded and fluidly slipped out of the living room, making his way up the stairs. Everyone was on their feet by that point, heads turned to the direction of the elevator as they waited for it to open. There was a feeling of  _wrongness_ brimming under his chest, and it was a sensation that Tony had learned experience not to ignore. Bad things tended to happen when they did.

“I’ve got no idea,” he muttered, nodding over to the elevator, “but I guess we can find out now.”

And that was when the doors slid open, revealing two men in prim suits, one holding a clipboard under his arm. They both smiled around the room, seemingly unfazed by the standoff between them and a room full of superheroes. By all accounts, they seemed very plain and normal- just like any other government official one would see in day-to-day life. “Good morning,” the first one said warmly, stepping forward, “I’m Michael, and this is my partner John. We’re here in response to a call made saying you’ve got a child in the tower that doesn’t belong to any of you? Would you like to explain the events that led up to this, and then we can discuss how to move forward?”

The other man, John, hefted up his clipboard and then looked over at Steve, who was stood at the front of the group, expectantly. Steve froze, obviously completely at a loss for what to say. They couldn’t tell the truth, not now all this new information had come to light- Peter would be in danger if he got put into the system at this point, and none of the team would let the child run that risk.

“Who made the call?” Natasha asked with a cocked head instead, folding her arms, but Michael only looked at her with another government-official smile. The corner of his mouth ticked back and forth a little, some sort of twitch. Probably from having to smile that plastically all the time.

“I’m sorry Miss Romanov, but that’s confidential. We’re just here to respond to the matter and try to make sure that any potentially vulnerable children are accounted for.”

“Well, lucky for you, the matter has already been dealt with,” Tony told them firmly, giving his own smile as he lifted his hands placatingly, “we did temporarily have a child in our custody, but the mother came back for him the next day. Seemed to have had a change of heart, I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t really care. Kids aren’t exactly any of our forte’s, if you haven’t noticed.”

The man’s head turned stiffly to him; something strange in his gaze. There was an unnerving lack of emotion in his eyes, and Tony felt his hackles rise instinctively. At his side, he could sense Natasha doing the same. This just felt… wrong. But still, the man smiled again, the little twitch pulling his mouth up a fraction of an inch. “Seems an awful lot of equipment to buy for a baby you were only holding onto for 24 hours,” he said, waving a hand over to the high-chair in the kitchen and the now-empty boxes of toys and equipment stacked up in the corner of the room, ready to be taken out by the cleaners.

But Tony shrugged breezily, the excuse already on his tongue. “Just because I don’t like kids doesn’t mean I’m an asshole to them. I wanted to make sure he was happy during his short stay at the Avengers Tower. I’m a good host like that.”

John was staring at him blankly, the pen moving in his hand and writing down perfectly straight lines despite the fact he was no longer looking at the sheet. Michael was still smiling. Tony resisted the urge to call the suit straight to him, just in case. He didn’t want to have to deal with a court case, not right now. These guys were weird, but that didn’t make them dangerous. Just… well, weird. Hardly a reason to repulsor blast them straight out of the building.

They just had to hold their nerve, and see if they could blag their way through this.

“I’m afraid we have evidence to suggest that the child is still in the building,” Michael informed them, stepping forward again. Surreptitiously, Tony placed his hand on Steve’s back and held him in place, stopping him from immediately responding and marching up to meet the other man. Steve swallowed, but then consciously relaxed at Tony’s touch.

“Can we see your badge, please?” He asked politely, putting on all his Captain America charm instead. “Or any other proof of identity will be fine, thank you.”

Michael sighed. “Please, we don’t have to make a big deal out of this, guys. We know that you have a child on the premises. Multiple people have made calls to say as such. Just make life easier and tell us where he is, and we can move forward without having to take legal action.”

“We’d like a badge, first,” Bruce said, his voice clipped.

Michael smiled once more, the expression sticking on his face a moment too long. During that very same moment, Tony came to a rather important conclusion about the two men in front of him, and a dozen tiny details clicked into place to make a big and rather ugly picture. The weird glassy expressions. The slightest stiffness to their movements.

The twitch that was not a twitch. The twitch that was a  _lag_.

“Out of interest,” Tony said breezily as his eyes narrowed in on Michael, “have either of you fine gentlemen ever come across the term ‘LMD’ before?”

The reaction in the room was palpable. All five Avengers shifted instinctively, knees bending and eyes turning to the two men in front of them. Bruce swore and Steve tugged Tony behind him, while Natasha slid in smoothly and took his place at the front.

The social service workers had the gall to look surprised, and for a moment Tony wondered whether he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. That would be rather embarrassing. Luckily – or  _unluckily_ , he supposed- he was saved the embarrassment of an incorrect assumption by the resigned sigh that Michael released, and then a shrug of indifference a second later. “I really hoped we could just do this the easy way,” he admitted, “but if this is how you would like to do things… John- get the kid. I’ll deal with these guys.”

And then all hell broke loose.

The other LMD- John-  _moved_. Fast and rapid, scrambling to the left and bolting for the stairs on the other side of the room at the same time that Michael jumped forward and threw the heel of his fist into Steve’s chest with a force that sent the man stumbling back. The robot was strong; unnaturally so, and it was enough to put Steve on the floor, which didn’t bode well. Tony spun on his heel, throwing an arm out in Thor’s direction. “You get the other one!” He yelled, hearing behind him as Natasha tackled the LMD away from Steve, “don’t let him touch Peter!”

Thor didn’t waste another second. He stumbled backward and then sprinted after the LMD that was making its way up the stairs, his hand extended and summoning Mjolnir into his grasp. Tony turned back around, watching Steve flip back onto his feet and then leap into the air, his foot snapping out into a front kick. But Michael moved with unnerving speed, slapping Steve’s leg out of the way as he stumbled out of the danger zone. Natasha was hot on his heels, however; an arm snaking around the LMD’s neck and attempting to hurl him over her hip. Tony grabbed Bruce’s arm and looked at the other man, his eyes clenched shut and his breathing coming in steady. Tony needed to help the other two- but first of all, he needed to stop an oncoming Hulk Incident. They couldn’t afford that- not unless they’d expended all other options.

“Deep breaths, Bruce,” he said calmly, wincing at the sound of a plate hitting the floor. He glanced back at Steve, who was now helping Natasha try and pin the robot to the floor. “Don’t go Green.  _Do_ go upstairs and grab Peter so Clint can help Thor take out the other LMD, alright?”

Tensely, Bruce nodded. “On it,” he snapped, turning away from the fight at hand and then following in Thor’s footsteps, sparing one last glance behind him at Tony before breaking out into a sprint.

That left Tony, Steve, Natasha and the LMD, which currently appeared to be kicking Natasha’s ass into the nearby wall. He moved at lightning speed, each move calculated and perfectly executed, not flagging or feeling any of the pain that came from the blows raining down on him. Tony was no use in hand-to-hand here; hell, Steve and Natasha combined were barely able to hold the thing back.

However, Tony  _was_ good with robots. Robots were his specialty, thank you very much, and he wasn’t about to be killed by one in his own home.

“JARVIS, give me a frequency of 40,000 hertz, loud as you can,” Tony ordered as he lurched sideways, barely avoiding the LMD as it swiped a fist out in his direction. Steve snarled and leaped through the air, grabbing the robot’s hand before it could aim another blow Tony’s way. “Steve, sweetheart, hands over your ears!”

LMD’s were good, but from what Tony knew about them, they were also controlled by an external source, which meant they were being transmitted instructions from somewhere. If Tony could find the right frequency to disrupt the connection, he could fuck with the instructions going through to the LMD’s system and, hopefully, shut the thing down.

Steve reflexively took Tony’s advice, rolling to the side and allowing Natasha to take front once more as he covered his ears. A second later JARVIS played out the frequency over the speakers; a pitch Tony couldn’t hear through his ears, but felt reverberate through his bones. He winced at the uncomfortable sensation, checking to see if the LMD flagged. But it didn’t. Instead, it merely ducked low and swiped Natasha’s legs from underneath her, before turning to Tony with a dangerous smile. “Nice try,” he snarled, before lunging forward.

Tony had the good sense to duck away from the first right hook sent flying his way, but he missed the knee that rose up to meet him, and it clipped his ribs painfully. He tossed himself to the side and gasped. “50,000, J!” He yelled.

The LMD advanced, but was tackled to the floor by Steve before he could get close to Tony. Natasha scrambled back upright too, aiming her bare foot at his head and slamming it down against the tiled floor. Steve’s face was twisted in pain from the awful high-pitched screaming that JARVIS was blasting, and the immense discomfort was enough to distract him just enough to let the LMD break free of his grip, headbutting Steve viciously. He hissed in pain, reeling back, and a second later the LMD grabbed Natasha’s ankle and squeezed. Tony heard bone break through the room.

In a second that LMD was going to do some serious damage to Natasha’s leg, and the frequency blasting out through the speakers wasn’t doing jack shit to it. Maybe that was because Tony was going the wrong way up the scale, though.

“JARVIS,” he called out, jumping to his feet and grabbing one of the stools, smashing the leg down into the underside of the robot’s elbow. The impact forced him to let go of Natasha’s ankle, and she stumbled away with a bitten off curse. “JARVIS, play 5 hertz. Loud as you can.”

The LMD’s face whipped over to him, the vicious smile dropping off his face. A second later, Tony felt more than heard the low vibration push its way through the room, and finally, finally, the LMD reacted to it. His face twisted and his body stiffened, all of his actions suddenly getting interrupted by the pitch.

Tony wasted no time. He vaulted the table, scrambling for the closest sharp object he could find, which just so happened to be a screwdriver. “Steve, hold him down!” He yelled, jumping back over and then watching the other man roll back onto his feet and pin the LMD by its arms to the floor. The robot struggled and twitched violently as Tony got to his knees and leaned over the thing’s head.

Then, without further ado, he slammed the sharpened end of the screwdriver deep in between the LMD’s eyebrows, watching the sparks fly and the man’s eyes turn an eerie white as the pointy object drove its way straight through the motherboard.

A second later, Michael the LMD came to an abrupt halt, body stilling on the floor. That was that.

Tony breathed in sharply, looking up at Steve. The man had blood dripping freely from his nose; obviously broken from the headbutting. Aside from that though, he seemed relatively unharmed. “Nat?” He called breathlessly, turning behind him. She was on the floor, one hand around her mangled ankle.

“I’m okay,” she said, voice clipped. “JARVIS, what’s the status on the other LMD?”

“I am still playing the frequency, and it appears that Thor and Barton are close to—” JARVIS cut off for a moment, before announcing firmly, “the second LMD has now been taken care of.”

“Peter?” Steve asked, wiping his nose and scrunching his face up in discomfort.

“Unharmed, Captain Rogers.”

Tony breathed out a sigh of relief and looked back down at the lifeless LMD in front of them. He swallowed down the guilt as he tugged the screwdriver back out and then rolled it over onto its stomach.

They hadn’t had any other choice. At least LMD’s didn’t feel pain.

“What are you looking for?” Natasha asked as she watched Tony tug the bot’s collar down a little and pull up his hair.

“Barcode, identifier, Producer, that sort of th—” Tony paused, spotting a mark a few centimetres underneath the LMD’s collar. He peered in closer to read the letters stamped onto its skin. “Ah.”

“Who?” Steve said, somewhat resignedly.

Tony looked up, sighing deeply. “AIM,” he declared, sitting back once more and then palming a hand across his face. “God, what the hell are they doing here?”

“Obvious, isn’t it?” Natasha said, and the two of them looked over to her. They all paused for a second as they heard footsteps coming down the stairs, but it was only Clint and Thor, closely followed by Bruce. Peter was tucked safely into his arms, unharmed, but quite clearly shaken. He was sucking at his thumb, face tucked deep into Bruce’s neck as he gripped tight to the man’s shirt. Tony thought it rather unusual that he wasn’t crying, but hey- at least that was one less thing they had to deal with.

Tony stood up and moved over to him swiftly, checking him over just in case. But the boy was fine, and as soon as he clocked Tony, he lifted his head and raised his hands out in askance. Tony didn’t hesitate; wrapping his arms gently around Peter’s body and then taking him from Bruce’s arms. “Hey there, big guy,” he murmured as he gently rocked the baby on his hip, “you’re causing quite a lot of trouble in this place, aren’t you?”

“Natasha,” Steve said in a somewhat more nasally voice as he moved back to the subject at hand, “what do you think’s going on here?”

She pursed her lips, nodding at Bruce as the man got to his knees next to her leg and then began to check her ankle. “I think that AIM have been experimenting with superhumanism,” she said, “SHIELD suspected that for a while, but we never got any concrete evidence, and I didn’t connect the dots. Not until now.” She nodded her head over to the lifeless LMD on the floor next to her. “I think that Peter was created by AIM. I think that, for whatever reason, the woman who brought him here knew what was going on, and wanted to help him. And I think that AIM hunted her down and forced the location of his whereabouts out of her before they killed her. Now… now they’re determined to get their one successful test subject back.”

There was a heavy silence in the room, as everyone looked at one another. Tony observed Clint and Thor, both of whom were also sporting some injuries too. Clint had a cut bleeding its way down his forehead, and Thor’s eye was swelling up a little in the beginnings of a black eye. This, Tony suspected, hadn’t even been a proper hit. AIM had just been scouting, using the LMD’s to confirm what they were suspicious of. But if this was what they were sending for preliminary reports, then God only knew what they were gonna do next time.

Tony pulled Peter more firmly against his chest, looking down at the little boy. His heart clenched painfully. What must this baby have gone through for the first few months of his life? If it was true- if that was the reason AIM were coming for him, then he must have been in their care ever since birth. Jesus- had he ever even been cared for properly? Hugged? No wonder he wasn’t crying right now. He was probably used to shit like this,  _Christ._

Tony didn’t want to think about that. It was making him feel kind of sick.

“How do we know he’s the only one?” Thor asked solemnly, looking over to Natasha. But it was Tony who answered.

“If they could recreate what Peter has, then why would they care so much about getting him back?” He said darkly.

Another silence. Tony saw Peter glance down at the LMD on the ground and then begin to sniffle in distress. “Must be a hell of a lot to take in, huh?” Tony whispered to him, turning them away from the body on the floor swiftly. He hoisted Peter up, ignoring how it spiked painfully against his ribs. The LMD had probably turned his skin an unhealthy shade of blue under his shirt, but he’d live.

“Well,” Clint said, breaking the heavy silence as he hopped onto the counter and wiped the blood off his face, “I take it social services are out now, then?”

Everyone snorted, and Steve poked the LMD with his foot. “Guess that’s one way of putting it,” he said grimly, looking up at Tony. There was blood all over his face- another sort of terrifying aspect about the serum. He bled more rapidly than other people, thanks to the speed at which his blood cells reproduced. It tended to make him look half-dead every time he got a facial wound, which didn’t exactly soothe many of Tony’s worries. He was going to have to make sure that Steve iced that later on.

“So… what do we do now?” Bruce asked the room, voice quiet and serious. They all shared looks with one another, and then one by one turned their eyes onto Peter, tucked into Tony’s arms. The whole baby-element was, admittedly, way out of their comfort zone. But hey- at least now they had AIM to contest with, and AIM were  _way_ more familiar than babies were.

Tony did not even want to get into the levels of dysfunction that that statement was. Apparently as a group, they all collectively felt more at home dealing with terrorism units than they did with children.

But, it seemed that they were being given a chance to practise, right here, right now. Peter was in danger- Peter was being chased down by one of the most notoriously evil scientific terrorism corporations in the world, and the only thing that was standing between him and them were the Avengers. Dysfunctional or not, they were still all that this baby had.

Tony tilted his chin and looked around the room. “What we do now, is we protect him. With everything we have at our disposal.”


	4. Chapter 4

They spent a majority of the rest of the day trying to come up with some semblance of a plan.

Clearly, social services were very much out. What with AIM’s interest and the fact that they were almost certainly monitoring the comings and goings of all children who were taken into care, everyone knew that allowing him to get put into the system would basically be the same as handing him straight over to the terrorists themselves. As Tony had suggested, Xavier was also a good option, but seeing as Peter was currently being hunted down by a rather formidable enemy, bringing him into a school full of young and vulnerable children would be potentially disastrous. AIM were salivating at the mouth over the prospect of one superhuman kid- none of the Avengers wanted to introduce them to a school full of them.

It seemed that really, the only option was for Peter to stay with them while they worked on taking down the operation responsible for tracking and recapturing the little boy. If push came to shove and they couldn’t manage it, they could always go down the SHIELD protection route, which involved an agent taking him to someplace far away and looking after him until the hunt had died down. Although none of them were particularly keen on that possibility either. Anyway, it wouldn’t need to come to that. they were the Avengers. They could handle a baby just fine.

 

Famous last words.

 

“Guys!” Bruce said faintly from the living room, where he was sat helping Peter build something out of chunky Lego blocks, “I think Peter’s pooped.”

Tony looked over to Steve with a pulled face, setting down his tablet. “Then change his diaper!” He called out, “there are some in the cupboard where we keep the condiments.”

Steve made a face. “Why are we keeping diapers in the condiment cupboard?”

“Why are we keeping diapers in the condiment cupboard?” Bruce asked as he walked into the kitchen with an incredulous look on his face, “also, I don’t know how to put one on. You’re gonna have to do it.”

Tony raised his eyebrows and laughed. “How high is your IQ Doctor Banner? Learn to. I’m not going near the kid until it’s my turn to change the thing, which it is not.”

“We have a rota now?” Steve asked, “where am I on it?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “You’re nowhere on it, seeing as you have a panic attack every time Peter goes near you.”

“Um, excuse me?” Bruce said, just as Steve opened his mouth to object. “how come Steve gets away without diaper duty and not me?”

“Because—look, it’s not even an official rota, you touched him last, you do the diaper, that’s the rule—”

“But I don’t know how!” Bruce complained, and Tony groaned loudly, throwing his hands in the air.

“You have multiple PhD’s!”

“Not in baby-care! What if he…” Bruce made a face, “what if he pees on me?”

Tony opened his mouth to say something along the lines of ‘you’re a goddamn New Yorker and you can’t handle a bit of piss?’ When his train of thought was suddenly interrupted by JARVIS’ voice, speaking up through the sound system. “Excuse me sirs,” he said politely, “but it appears Peter is attempting to mash Lego blocks into the DVD player.”

They all looked at each other, before Steve pointed at Bruce. “Your fault,” he said, “you left the baby unattended. Rule number one.”

“Oh, as if you can even say a word about baby rules,” Bruce snapped as he turned on his heel and then ran back over to the living room. Steve frowned at Bruce’s words and looked at Tony, but he didn’t get much support.

“He’s got a point, babe,” Tony said, “you’re kind of allergic to the whole…. ‘children’ thing.”

Steve froze, and then blinked incredulously. “What?” He asked, “No, that's not true. I’ve always wanted… I just—”

“just not any more,” Tony finished for him, nodding tightly and missing out the ‘and just not with me.’

Steve seemed to know what he was thinking, because he frowned deeply and leaned forward, taking Tony’s hand. His mouth opened to speak, but they were interrupted by the re-entering of Bruce, this time carrying Peter with a look of immense distaste on his face. He didn’t say a word- simply plopped Peter down into Tony’s lap and then stepped away. “There,” he said, “now you touched him last.”

And without another second to debate the matter, the mighty Hulk turned tail and sprinted out of the kitchen, leaving Tony sitting with a lapful of pooey baby. He blinked a few times, desperately trying to resist the urge to emit a truly foul string of curses. “Hulk is a god-damn coward,” Tony declared loudly instead, turning to Steve and then Peter and waggling a finger. “You hear me? He’s a gigantic fucking wimp. I want you to remember that when you grow up, kid. If you learn only one thing while you’re here, it should be that.”

Steve snorted a little, and Tony glared at him, unimpressed. “What, Rogers, you wanna do it?” He snapped, and Steve’s quickly averted gaze and hasty silence was answer enough.

Tony sighed, palming a hand over his face as he stood up. “I’m the world’s leading technology expert,” he grumbled to Peter, propping the little boy up into his arms and reaching up to the condiment cupboard, “I’ve changed society, you know that right? Revolutionised science. This? This is not what I was put on this Earth for, and I want a full-blown apology later, you hear me?”

Peter burbled happily, sucking at a piece of lego as he looked up at Tony through his startling blue eyes. They reminded him of Steve quite a lot, if he was being honest. Tony frowned and then tugged it out, pulling a face at the saliva coating it. “Ugh, gross. Hey Steve!”

The man glanced up, and Tony threw the little block at him. Steve, of course, caught it- and then immediately dropped it when he felt the slimy texture. Tony just smiled. “Choking hazard,” he explained, once more turning back to Peter. “Don’t eat plastic. It’s bad for you.”

“Bhabla,” Peter responded with wisely, before a bit of drool slipped down his chin. Tony sighed and brushed it off, making a sad face as he wiped his hand against his pants. He was sure Giorgio Armani hadn’t intended for his designs to be used in such a way.

Tony changed the kid’s diaper quickly and efficiently, muttering under his breath throughout the whole ordeal. Peter was content to simply kick his legs and generally be a pain in the ass, but Tony managed to hold his attention long enough to strap a new diaper on, and a minute later the suffering was over and he had a fresh baby sat on the table. He looked up and realised Steve had been watching the whole time, and raised an eyebrow. “Taking notes?”

Steve blushed, looking away with a shrug. “You’re really good at this,” he said quietly, whilst his finger traced around the rim of his cup.

Tony just shrugged, flicking Peter gently on the nose and sitting him up again. The kid smiled his gummy smile over at him, his hand reaching up for the arc reactor like he always did when he got level with it. He had a strange fascination with the thing. “Well, I don’t like my home to stink like shit, and it doesn’t seem like any of you other lazy fucks are gonna do i—”

“No, I mean… you’re good at all of it,” Steve said, waving a hand to Peter’s general vicinity. “Looking after him. You’ve got a real soft spot for him, huh?”

Tony paused where he was stood, fingers lingering against the little bit of Peter’s sweater that he’d absently been sorting out. Something tight closed around his heart, and he looked down with a small huff. Steve was probing- probably thought Tony was gonna catch baby-fever after this or something, and then beg for a family of his own. Like he’d be any fucking good at that. Anyway- Steve had made it abundantly clear how much he disliked the very concept, and Tony was not going to push that. Not right now. There was too much on his damned plate.

“Nah,” he said shortly, turning away, “I’m not really good, just making sure the kid doesn’t die in our care, you know? I don’t… he’s really annoying, mostly. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna go all lovey-dovey-family shit on you. I’d be crap at it anyway.” To prove his point, he rolled his eyes at Peter and pulled a face, stepping out of the baby’s grasp. Although it was a pretty dumb point to make- a second later he had to step forward and stop the little menace from rocking off the table in an attempt to follow him.

He sighed, picking Peter up. It had been six very long days, by that point, and he could feel the way Steve had tensed up a little on the table. Tony didn’t want to have this conversation right now. He’d do something uncalled for, like get upset over it. It wasn’t even a big deal if Steve refused to interact with Peter, and always gave Tony funny looks whenever he did. It wasn’t important that Steve got snappy whenever one of the team made jokes about Peter being a new addition to their ‘happy family’.  
Steve just didn’t like it. That was okay.

(Tony had just thought… one day, maybe… but it had been silly. Hadn’t even discussed it with Steve— and sure, the man had confessed he’d dreamed of marriage and kids and a nice family home when he’d been fighting on the front lines, but that was a long time ago. That had been when he’d still had Peggy. And obviously, Tony wasn’t… built for that. Steve knew as much, so he’d dropped the idea. C’est la vie.)

Tony didn’t care. As he’d just mentioned, it wasn’t like he’d be good at it anyway.

Peter pulled his attention away from his own thoughts by smacking his palm into the glass casing of the reactor in front of him. “Appah,” he said happily, eyes gazing into the cold blue light. “Appah!”

Tony could still feel Steve’s gaze on him, and when he looked over, for some reason Steve’s eyes were pained. Tony felt his heart sink a little at the sight- he hadn’t meant to make this into A Thing. Now Steve probably felt sorry for him or something, dammit. He blinked quickly and hoisted Peter to eye-level, observing him clinically. “We haven’t bathed him yet, have we?” He asked, “we should probably do that. Babies need baths. I’ll go and—do that. Now. Cool.”

“Tony, hey, wait,” Steve said, but Tony was already turning and heading for their room, Peter still tapping absently against the reactor casing. He was a warm little mound against Tony’s chest, and it was nice. He could admit that. Babies were totally annoying and dumb and useless, true, but there were some benefits. Like a ready-made excuse to run from awkward situations. That was a definite plus.

He sighed, shifting Peter higher up onto his hip. It was hard to imagine that there was a dangerous terrorist unit out hunting for something as completely ineffective and harmless as the child in his arms. Peter clung to things randomly whenever he felt like it, but that was about it. As far as Tony could tell, that was as far as his range extended. Useful, but not something worth going toe-to-toe with the Avengers over, surely?

He looked at Peter analytically. “Do you have secret lazer eyes or something?” He asked, to which Peter responded with a blank stare. “Breathe fire? Could you potentially destroy the world?”

“Bah,” Peter said firmly.

Tony nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, thought so,” he muttered. “JARVIS, turn on the water for me. Make sure it’s not too hot.”

“Certainly, Sir,” JARVIS responded easily, and by the time he and Peter arrived in the bathroom, bubbly water was already starting to fill up the bath. Tony placed Peter down on the bath mat and then hastily cleared away his stray bits of shaving equipment, lest the little terror got his hands on a razor-blade. During his short stay, they’d all pretty much worked out that any available object within touching distance was fair game to Peter, and anything that could feasibly fit would most likely end up in his mouth. He watched Peter out of the corner of his eyes as he cleaned it all away, smirking when the boy simply looked down at the mat in fascination, fingers trailing over the little bobbles. He was a cute kid; Tony dare even say cuter than average- the boy’s eyes were totally enrapturing, huge and as blue as the sky up above, and the hair atop his head was fluffy and soft, emanating that Unique Baby Smell that Tony could just bury his face in and smell for days.

He shook his head and crouched back down, tugging Peter into a sitting position and carefully getting his little onesie off. Peter tried to grab for his reactor again, and Tony swatted his hand away with a tut. “Focus, kid,” he said, “all these arms are tricky to remove from clothing, you know.”

He eventually managed to wrangle the kid out of it, and then held him aloft over the bath water, hesitating for a second. “Uh,” he began, “JARVIS, buddy, can you look up—is there a specific way to like… bathe babies?” He felt stupid for asking, but he didn’t want to do it wrong.

Apparently, though, bathing was the same no matter what age you were. Tony sat the kid down in the water promptly after discovering as such, grinning at Peter’s surprised expression. “You ever had a bath before, Munchkin?” He asked, swirling the bubbles around and watching as Peter gazed down at them. “What about bubbles? Ever seen them?”

By Peter’s fascinated eyes, he figured not. Peter was still for a moment, before he smacked a hand down against the water and then watched it splash against the sides and onto Tony’s shirt. Then he absolutely chortled in delight, doing it again and again and again.

Tony sighed in resignation, realising he was probably not going to leave this room dry. “Alright, you get that out of your system,” he muttered, rolling up his shirt-sleeves and then flicking water back at Peter, who only cackled harder, smashing down on a pile of bubbles and sending the suds flying everywhere.  
Who knew baths could be so amusing to babies?

Tony was happy to indulge him though, finding himself having almost as much as fun as Peter was. It was just… cute, watching the kid. Babies laughed at everything- it was incredibly validating, if Tony was being real. Peter was inquisitive, he was cheeky and had a definite personality already. Tony was sort of fascinated by him, and it seemed Peter was just as fascinated by all of the team, too. Over the past few days he’d developed a specific attachment to Natasha and Thor, for some reason. And Tony. Although that was probably just because Tony had a strange glowy light in his chest. Babies were like moths when it came to bright things. Loved ‘em, apparently.

He swished the water around absently, taking Peter’s arm and gently swiping across it, rubbing at it to remove any sticky substances he’d managed to get ahold of. Peter burbled away in his own language as he worked, and Tony found himself talking back easily, about random things he could think of off the top of his head. He’d heard somewhere that that was how babies learned to talk, and hey, it couldn’t hurt.

 

“I’d actually love to have a family,” someone behind him said, and Tony jumped a mile in the air as he twisted his body and looked at Steve in surprise. The man was stood at the door, leaning into it with his hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets. Tony hadn't even heard home come through the door. He forgot how quiet Steve could be when he wanted it.

Tony breathed out, palming a damp hand over his heart. “Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, make a noise when you’re walking up behind a guy,” he said, before the words Steve had just said processed in his head and he looked up sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

Steve shuffled. “I’ve always wanted one,” he blurted, “and I always will. I… I’m not sure how to say this, but—”

“You don’t need to, it’s okay, I get it,” Tony told him quickly, ignoring the way everything that had seconds ago been pleasant now felt uncomfortable- the dampness of his clothes he’d previously ignored, the way the lights were a little bit too cold and it was making his eyes burn. He didn’t want to hear Steve say that he wanted a family, but just couldn’t fathom it being with Tony. He didn’t want to have to accept that as fact and realise he just wasn’t family material. It was true, but it didn’t make it hurt less.

Steve blinked. “What… what is it that you ‘get’, Tony?” He asked, his voice slightly wary, and Tony blinked sharply, turning back to the bath and picking up a handful of bubbles just to have something to do.

“You know,” he shrugged, “just… I get that I’m not exactly great parental material or whatever, I understand that, and like, we’re not exactly a conventional couple, are we? I’ve got issues on top of my fucking issues and it just… wouldn’t work. I know this makes you uncomfortable because you think I’m gonna start asking about babies and stuff, but I promise, I get it. So. Yeah. No need to discuss it.”

Steve didn’t say anything, and Tony mentally fucking cursed himself. He always overshared- every fucking time. Peter was still preoccupied with slathering bubbles against the side of the tub, and Tony watched him intently, even as he felt Steve slowly move to his side and then sit on the floor next to him so that their shoulders brushed. “Tony?” He asked, his hand settling against Tony’s and squeezing gently, “look at me, sweetheart?”

Tony swallowed, turning his head. Steve leaned down and kissed him gently, his hand cupping around Tony’s jaw. A slightly confusing response, sure, but Tony would take it.  
Steve broke away, brushing their noses together. “I can guarantee that everything you’re thinking is wrong,” he said with a small smile, “because you are remarkably good at coming to the worst conclusions, and I'm excellent at giving the wrong impressions.”

Tony frowned, pulling away a little. “I don’t understand,” he said, “you said—”

“I’m scared, Tony,” Steve cut in with a sigh, clearly wanting to rip the bandaid off and just blurt it out, “I am scared of touching the baby. It’s not-- it's absolutely not that I don’t think you’re a person I’d want to settle down with, that’s completely insane. I love you more than anything. Starting a family with you would be…” he looked down, blushing a little. “It’d be perfect,” he finished softly.

Tony blinked once, rapidly trying to re-evaluate the situation. “Huh?” He said, eloquent as ever, “then what was with all of the…” Tony waved his hands absently, “getting mad when the team talked made all the ‘big happy family’ jokes? Why do you always look at me funny when I’m holding him?”

Steve shut his eyes and sighed, slumping down and pressing his back against the side of the tub. “I thought they were making fun of me,” he said with a shrug, “because they all probably worked out why I’m fuckin’ useless around him. Still didn’t like them doing it though, it was annoying. As for the way I looked at you—” He grinned and rolled his neck, looking up at Tony with an amused expression, “I don’t know what it was that you were seeing, but I was pretty sure I looked like a lovestruck fool. That’s how I felt, anyway.”

Tony made a face. “That was not your lovestruck face,” he said incredulously, “that was your ‘what the fuck is happening here’ face.”

“Yeah, because you were—” Steve flailed a little, trying to find the words as his cheeks went steadily pinker, “I’d always thought you’d be more wary around kids, just as clueless as the rest of us, you know? But you’re not. You’re brilliant with him. You just know what to do, and you hold him like it’s so natural and I just… love it. Watching you with him makes me really happy.”

Tony spluttered, pulling a face as he tried to think of a way to brush that off, except he couldn’t quite make anything roll off his tongue. He’d never thought of it that way.  
Peter slid across the floor of the bathtub and used the edge of the tub to haul himself up and then clutch a hand into Tony’s shirt, demanding some more attention. Tony rolled his eyes and sat him back down, grabbing a cupful of water and then pouring it over his head, making sure to cover his eyes. “So come on,” he muttered, head shifting back to Steve curiously, “tell me why this 2-foot baby scares you, Captain America.”

Steve smiled, but it was a little tight as he curled his hands around his knees and frowned. “Because I break doors when I’m not concentrating,” he mumbled quietly, “because I weigh four times the average person and babies don’t even have fully developed skulls until they hit nine months old. Tony, I don’t… they’re so fragile.” He swallowed and shook his head. “So so fragile. And I am… not. It’d be like trying to make an industrial crane pick up a china teacup.”

Tony’s brows knitted together, looking over at Steve. His shoulders were tight, eyes on his own hands as he bit his lip. Nervous habit. “You don’t feel afraid touching me,” he said, before pausing. “You don’t, right?”

Steve just shrugged. “Not most times, no,” he admitted, “but babies are… different, I dunno. I know you can bounce back from some things. But kids?” He shook his head again. “I watched so many babies get whooping cough and never recover. Polio, measles, whatever. I heard them cry every night because they were so hungry and no one had any money to feed ‘em. They need so much help and care, and I don’t—what if I fucked that up?”

“You wouldn’t fuck up, Steve.”

“Yeah, well, you would say that,” Steve huffed and ran a hand over his face, “it comes easily to you. You just… know. But I see him and I freak out. Feel like I’m gonna do it all wrong.”

Tony paused, and then shuffled sideways a bit, jerking his head. “Then practise,” he said with a nonchalant shrug, “Pete still needs his hair washing.”

Steve’s eyes widened. “Uh, I don't think… I’m not—”

“Steve,” Tony turned and pulled his face close, kissing him softly before rubbing a thumb across the ridge of his cheek, “you know how to control yourself. I wouldn’t let you close to him if I didn’t think you were safe. All you have to do is grab some water and run it through his hair, alright? I’ll make it doesn’t go in his eyes.” He leaned down and cupped the side of his hand over Peter’s forehead again, waiting for Steve to pour the water this time.

Steve looked between Peter and Tony for a few seconds, before awkwardly shuffling around and then dipping his hand into the warm water. Peter watched him somewhat curiously- to the little boy, Steve was still probably a relative stranger. But he didn’t get scared or start to cry, merely remained quiet and watchful as Steve carefully let the water trickle from his palms and onto Peter’s head. “Just give it a little rub,” Tony informed him, “clean out any dirt that’s sticking around.”

Steve pulled a conflicted face, and for a moment Tony wondered whether he was going to bolt- but then his fingers settled, soft and delicate against Peter’s skull as he rubbed the baby’s hair. “Am—is this right?” Steve asked.

“I have no fucking clue,” Tony said with a snort, “I hope so.”

Steve ran his hand down Peter’s head to the back of his neck, and Peter squeaked and jumped, causing Steve to pull back hastily, eyes going wide. “Shit, what’d I do,” he blurted, “did I—”

“Steve, relax,” Tony couldn’t help but laugh as he poked Peter’s chest and then crooked his finger, making the boy jump and start to giggle again, “he's not a bomb- he’s just ticklish, sweetheart. You’re fine.”

“Oh,” Steve blushed a little before pushing Tony in the shoulder when he saw the man’s face. “Shut up, I told you, I’m no good at this!”

Tony just rolled his eyes, scooping up a handful of bubbles and then pushing it into Steve’s face, much to the man’s surprise. “It’s bathtime,” he informed him, “it would be tremendously hard for you to be ‘bad’ at it.”

Peter looked at Steve, now with soap suds dripping down his face, and cackled uproariously, fisting his hands and then beating down against the surface of the water. Both Steve and Tony grinned, Steve picking up another handful of bubbles from the bath and blowing it in Tony’s direction. Most of it ended up catching in his hair, damn it. Unfortunately, however, Steve was laughing with that carefree little chuckle of his and so Tony found it rather difficult to scold him for it. Instead, he turned to Peter who was also laughing, and then stuck out his tongue. “Oh, quiet you,” he snapped, smearing a handful of bubbles into the little boy’s face too.

By the time that Peter was clean enough to be let out of the bath, both Steve and Tony were pretty much soaked from the waist up, either by soapy residue or splashback from Peter’s movement. Tony silently mourned the state of what had once been a beautiful silk shirt- but a second later when he watched Steve huff and just decide to pull his own T-shirt off entirely, revealing a perfect upper half that Tony had seen countless times but still never quite got used to, he decided that the sacrifice made had been worth it. “Take him out and dry him off, will you?” He nodded to Peter and then stood up, feeling his knees ache as they extended, “I’ll go get his sleepsuit.”

He couldn’t help but crack a smile at Steve’s analytic face, watching the man observe the situation and clearly attempt to visualise how he was going to go about removing Peter from the tub. Tony left him to work it out while he hurried out of the bathroom and made his way over to the crib they’d rigged up into the corner of the room, plucking the small outfit out of it and then balling it up into his hand. It was covered in little cartoon ducks and, admittedly, incredibly cute to see Peter wearing.

He heard a splash of water from the other room and then Steve’s muttered tones and turned back around, heading back to the bathroom and poking his head inside. Steve was holding Peter about a meter away from him, letting the baby drip water onto the mat as he stared intently. “Okay. Okay, alright see, this isn’t so hard,” he muttered to himself as he slowly, carefully lowered Peter onto the towel he’d placed over the floor. Peter kicked his legs out experimentally, and Tony half expected Captain America to scream, but the superhero held his nerve.

He settled Peter onto the towel and then smiled down at him, grabbing a corner of the towel and curling it over the little boy’s body, giving him a rub. It made Peter’s legs start kicking again, and he grabbed them with the tips of his podgy fingers, smiling up at Steve. “You like that, huh?” Steve asked quietly, and Tony bit his lip to stop himself from actively swooning over the cuteness of it all. Peter was small, but when compared to Steve, the kid was positively minuscule, his whole head spanning nothing more than the width of Steve’s hand. But Steve was gentle, so very gentle as he tucked his finger under Peter’s chin and then crooked a finger, tickling him lightly. When Peter squirmed and giggled again, Steve’s whole face lit up.

“See?” Tony made his presence known as he stepped fully into the room and beamed, “not so hard, is it?”

Steve shrugged bashfully, taking Peter’s arm and then rubbing it down softly. “Guess not,” he murmured, “I think you’re still his favourite though.”

Tony glanced down, looking at the way Peter held his hands out over his head, reaching for Tony across the room once he’d clocked his entrance through the door. Tony splayed out his fingers and waved at the kid, feeling the little flutter of happiness in his chest when Peter lifted his own hand and then appeared to try and copy the motion.

It was all very… domestic. Like a little snapshot into a universe in which he and Steve could have this, permanently.  
It was nice.

“Tony?” Steve asked, and he blinked, pulling himself out of his own head as he smiled and chucked the little sleepsuit in Steve’s direction.

“Good luck putting that on his squirmy little ass,” Tony declared, “I’m gonna brush my teeth.”

He sat on the edge of the bath and watched while Steve delicately attempted to navigate dressing Peter, getting steadily more flustered as Peter continued to wriggle and squirm and generally be a nuisance. Tony instructed Steve to just hold on and guide Peter’s arm through firmly, but it took a good while before Steve became assured that it wouldn’t hurt Peter, and the full two minutes of teeth-brushing had come and gone before Steve finally leaned back and gestured at a now fully-clothed baby. He looked inordinately proud.

God, Tony loved him.

Peter’s hair was a fluffy little bird’s nest atop his head, but that only added to his general aura of adorability as he splayed out like a starfish on the bath mat. Again, Tony wondered how the hell this boy could have possibly have belonged to something as insidious as AIM. The thought alone made him shudder with discomfort and anger. Peter was 6 months old according to JARVIS- he deserved the chance at a happy life just as much as anyone else. Tony refused to let AIM, or anyone, for that matter, take it away from the kid. He wanted Peter to carry that adorable cackling laughter with him for the rest of his

He bent down and scooped Peter up into his arms, jiggling him up and down playfully and listening to the boy burble happily against his chest. Steve followed behind them, and Tony saw the smug look in the reflection of the mirror. “ _‘he’s annoying, really’_ ” Steve repeated what Tony had said earlier, “ _‘I don’t like him, no, obviously, what are you talking about?’”_

Tony flushed. “Shut up. He _is_ annoying,” he declared, pointing to his shirt in evidence, “look, he ruined my clothes. Little gremlin,”

But Steve just rolled his eyes, slipping his arm around Tony’s waist and pulling him in. “I ruin your clothes every time I get frustrated with trying to undo the buttons, but you still love me.”

“Sure about that, Rogers?”

“Ha ha,” Steve said, deadpan, “just admit that you’re smitten with the kid and go.”

Tony tilted his chin defiantly. “I am not smitten with him.”

"You’re totally smitten with him.”

“I’m not, I told you, this isn’t… I’m no good with them, not in the long term, and they’re smelly and dumb and loud and—”

“Tony Stark, you would be the best father I could possibly think of, so you hush your mouth,” Steve told him firmly, effectively managing to bamboozle Tony into temporary silence. Steve couldn’t actually think that, right? Look at him, he was a disaster. His rather sordid past was (very close) behind him, but that didn’t mean that he’d actually learned any valuable skills in how to be a good dad. It wasn’t exactly like he’d had a spiffing role model himself either, and the very last thing he’d ever want to do to a child was put him through the same thing that Tony had gone through with Howard. The thought alone made him want to be sick.

He looked down at Peter quietly, watching the boy tap against each little cartoon duck that he could see on his sleepsuit. It was an hour or so until their decided ‘bedtime’, but Peter already seemed kind of sleepy, his eyes drooping every now and then as he laid his head heavily into Tony’s shoulder. He was so… innocent. The world, with all its cruelty, hadn’t managed to touch him yet. Even though he’d undoubtedly had a loveless first six months of his life, he was still a happy little boy.  
Tony just wanted to keep him safe.

“I mean that, you know,” Steve said, and Tony realised he may just have been quiet for a moment too long, because Steve’s face had turned serious, “you’d be fantastic. Just seeing you with Peter proves that much.”

 _That’s different,_ Tony wanted to say. Peter was a little kid in their care temporarily who Tony could bathe and play with and talk to, sure, but that wasn’t a child who relied on him to be the source of emotional comfort, of constant stability. Tony was fucked up, and he knew, one way or another, he’d end up foisting those problems onto his child. It wasn’t something he even wanted to imagine- he refused to be like his own dad. He was better off staying far away from kids altogether and just avoiding the problem. It would be better for everyone.

Except maybe Peter. Tony should probably stay close to him for a little while, if only to stop AIM from getting their filthy hands on him.

“Your turn to hold him,” Tony declared, suddenly keen on changing the subject as he turned around and then hoisted Peter up into Steve’s arms. The man grabbed him reflexively, and then looked at him in momentary panic, right back at square one. “Remember what I said- arm under his butt, hold him against your chest or on your hip, whichever feels most comfy.”

“I don’t—I—okay,” Steve spluttered, carefully shifting Peter around in his arms so he was held somewhat awkwardly between Steve’s hands. “Like this?”

Tony smiled and then repositioned his arm into a more comfortable location, then leaned up on his tiptoes and kissed his cheek, stopping to flick Peter on the nose along the way and make the boy’s face crinkle up adorable. “Perfect,” he agreed with a nod of his head. Steve smiled down at him, soft and gentle, and for a moment Tony wondered what this could be like if it was real. If this was actually something he and Steve could have, one day. To keep.

Wishful thinking, but nice all the same.

He stepped back. “Come on. I think the team’s watching a movie, but we can threaten diaper-duty on anyone who argues with us putting Peppa Pig on.”

Steve grinned, using his spare hand to link through with Tony’s and squeeze their fingers together. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, “although I’m not sure Peter’s gonna appreciate it much.” He nodded down at the boy now tucked into his arms, limp and beginning to drift off against Steve’s warm chest.

But Tony merely shrugged. “Who said it was for him?” He asked haughtily, before marching down the corridor with Steve’s laughter trailing behind him

 

-

 

It was quiet when Tony woke back up from where he’d drifted off on the couch, and he jerked his head upright in surprise. He hadn’t even realised he’d fallen asleep.

Across the living room and sat curled up on the loveseat, Natasha smiled at him. Unlike Steve, her injuries from the LMD attack a few days ago hadn't quite healed, and there was still a slight purple flourishing across her left cheek, while her foot was bound and cast on the floor. Despite that, though, she seemed relaxed. Natasha was not a woman to stew on her injuries. “Good rest?” She asked quietly, “We figured you probably needed it, what with all the baby-related wakeup calls you’ve been having these past few days.”

She was the only one who appeared to be left in the living room; everyone else having eventually gotten bored of Peppa Pig and drifted off to bed or wherever else they chose to spend their night. Natasha herself was reading a book, serene and almost cute in her little pink pajamas.

He looked left, and his heart sped up a few paces as he spotted Steve, also fast asleep, his head tilted back against the cushions as one arm laid gently against Peter’s back. The boy was splayed out like a starfish across Steve’s vast chest, eyes shut and dreaming peacefully.

“They look adorable, don’t they,” he whispered, flicking a finger over at the two of them and trying to tamp down on his smile. Steve and babies went very well together, aesthetically speaking. Tony thought that he could probably look at a scene like that all day and not get bored.

Natasha laughed. “Should’ve seen yourself five minutes ago. All curled up into Steve’s side, and Peter had his hand resting on yours like a scene from some wholesome family film. We have pictures.”

Tony rolled his eyes and sat up, feeling his neck twitch sorely. A little too old to be sleeping on couches, by this point. “Right- got any ideas on how to get a supersoldier and a mutant-baby into their correct beds without either of them screaming?”

She merely waved a hand, as if saying ‘lets find out’. He smiled again and then shook Steve’s shoulder softly, nudging him awake. Steve’s eyes fluttered open at the same time Tony gently lifted Peter off his chest and into his own arms. “Come on, Petey-pie,” he soothed as the boy stirred, making a little noise of irritation, “just gotta get both you boys to your proper beds.”

“Mmf,” Steve muttered, rubbing his eyes, “how long were we asleep?”

“Bout three hours,” Natasha told them, her expression fond as she took them all in, “everyone else got bored of Peppa Pig, but Steve was sat on the remote and JARVIS had been ordered not to change the channel.”

They both huffed in amusement, Steve getting to his feet and then pulling Tony up with him. Peter made another little noise, but aside from pawing uncoordinatedly at his face for a few seconds, he remained pliant and asleep in Tony’s arms. Natasha wandered forward and then leaned down, kissing the little boy’s forehead lightly as she passed. Tony knew that she had a soft spot for the boy too-- then again, pretty much all of them did, by this point. It had been a week, which objectively wasn’t long, but… for some reason, it felt like it was. It felt like Peter had already grown since Tony’s first picked him up.  
It felt a little bit like Peter almost belonged here.

He shut his eyes and shook the thought from his head, bidding Natasha goodnight as he and Steve slowly plodded up to their room together. It was nearly midnight, and the world was quiet, save for their footsteps on the carpet and Peter’s gentle breathing in his ear. Tony listened in to the steady back and forth of his breaths while his mind wandered at a million miles a minute over everything he'd been preoccupied with over the past few days. Ever since the LMD's had shown up on their doorstep, they’d been attempting to track down the AIM faction that was responsible for both sending them and producing Peter in the first place, but they’d been coming up blank with every search. Wherever or whoever they were, not only were they advanced enough to be successfully creating superhumans, but they were also irritatingly good at covering all of their tracks. So far, none of SHIELD's resources or intel was coming in useful, and not even Tony could drag out any scraps from the dark-web about anything of the sort. He'd put in a request to view the phone of the woman who'd ended up getting shot in the hotel, wondering if maybe there was anything on it that he'd be able to use, but the FBI were being dicks about that, and so it was gonna be a few days before Tony would be able to get his hands on that. The worst thing was that by that point, all the information would probably be fucking tainted anyway. A phone was as sensitive to disturbance as any other crime scene, and Tony was pretty fucking certain an FBI rookie would have already contaminated 80% of the evidence as soon as they'd broken into the damn thing.

All in all, everything was turning out to be incredibly fucking frustrating.

He wasn’t sure how long it was going to take to weed them out of whatever little dungeon they were hiding in, and until then it was simply a waiting game. A question of who would move first- AIM trying to take Peter back, or The Avengers trying to take AIM out. One thing he knew for sure though, was that was that it wasn’t going to be the former. Not if Tony had anything to do with it.

 

They got Peter tucked into his crib without any hassle, and then he and Steve quietly set about getting ready for bed themselves, both of them already sleepy and lethargic. Tony briefly thought about trimming his beard in preparation for the board meeting tomorrow, but ultimately decided he couldn’t be bothered and then fell into bed with Steve as soon as he’d pulled on his pajamas. Wordlessly, Steve pulled him in, skin swarm against Tony’s mouth as he leaned forward to press a kiss to whichever piece of the other man his lips connected with.

“Good day?” Steve asked him quietly, his hand slotting into place over Tony’s hip and running back and forth. He asked that question every night- just to make sure, just to keep an eye out for the bad stuff, knowing that Tony would find it harder to lie about it when he was here in bed, half-asleep and vulnerable. Tony should have thought of it as annoying, but he didn't. Couldn't even if he goddamn tried.

Instead, Tony thought the question over. Boring video conference, even more boring paperwork, brief crisis over Steve not wanting a family with him, then quickly resolved by some communication which led to a rather wholesome bonding bathtime and then falling asleep watching shitty cartoons about a family of pigs. Ten years ago, a day like that might have made him want to jump into oncoming traffic. God, ten years ago just having to think about a baby being in his care would have probably brought him out in hives.

Hell of a lot had changed since then, though.

“Yeah,” Tony said instead, settling in against Steve’s chest with a small smile, thinking of bubbles and giggles and a soft sense of longing at the sight of the man he loved holding a tiny little baby whilst they both slept peacefully on the couch of their home, “yeah, it was good.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this chapter describes scientific experimentation on baby peter and general child abuse themes

Tony looked up at the screen through bleary eyes, trying to stifle a yawn as he once more admitted defeat and erased the tab that’d been attempting to track an online paper-trail of evidence. This was the seventeenth brick wall he’d hit that day, and he was Goddamn tired of it. He hated AIM passionately. “JARVIS, any luck with the older files that SHIELD have in the archives?”

“Unfortunately not, Sir,” JARVIS admitted apologetically, “however the codebreaker is 98% complete and we will be able to access the contents of the deceased woman’s phone shortly.”

Tony rubbed his hands together gleefully—which, okay, was probably insensitive, but that phone was the biggest clue they had in regards to Peter’s origins, and after some rather stunning bargaining-slash-blackmail-slash-bamboozlement of poor Federal Recruitment Officers, Tony had managed to snag the thing from the FBI before they’d even gotten the chance to tamper with it. That meant fresh, untouched, beautiful data encryptions and information that would surely lead Tony to finding what he was looking for. It was like being a kid in a damn candy store.

Spinning around on his swivelly chair, he looked up at the roof of his workshop and debated going up to the communal floor for a break. He’d been looking at screens for about two days straight by that point, having cleared off a bunch of investor’s meetings and R&D discussions in order to try and further their case on AIM. He knew that Natasha and Clint were doing the same on the ground, but the trickle of information they were getting back to him just wasn’t enough. Tony needed answers. He needed solid facts. Better the devil you know than the devil who sent you a small baby and then left with no instructions on how to look after him.

With an irritated sigh, he pressed his glasses further up onto his nose and then rolled back over to the desk. Just as he reached out for his mug of coffee, JARVIS spoke up again: “Decryption complete, Sir.”

Tony’s hand immediately switched course, instead tugging out the phone from where he’d hooked it up with a grin of satisfaction. “God, it’s like Christmas,” he muttered as he switched on the device and opened it up. “Let’s find out who you are, lady—or, uh, who you were, at least.”

The process of going through someone else’s phone with a fine-tooth comb was exhausting and kind of uncomfortable. The woman, who Tony found out had been called Doctor Amelia Lewinsky, seemed to use the phone for both personal and work reasons. There were a few photos in her gallery of selfies she’d taken, views she’d thought were pretty. It was weird, Tony thought—like rifling through a box of memories owned by a ghost. Nevertheless, he persisted onward, searching every detail of the device in order to try and get his hands on something useful. And luckily it wasn’t too long before his work bore the fruits of success. A link in a (badly) encrypted email, leading to a download of a single ZIP file. “Throw it up on the big screen, J,” he said absently, waving a hand and watching the information appear up on his holographic interface. Once opened, that was where he hit jackpot. There were reams and reams of data; videos and statements and audio recordings, all filed under ‘Project SUHU’. Tony leaned in close to the screen. He could spend the whole night going through this and still not get even half-way through. Luckily, however, there was a rather handy place for him to start. One file was titled ‘Vidlog: SUHU R&D’. Tony figured that was a good way to get an overview.

So he clicked on the first file and sat back to watch.

A second of blackness, and then the face of what had once been Doctor Lewinsky gazed right at him, looking into the camera. “October 7th, 2015,” she began crisply, placing her hands on the desk, “Doctor Amelia Lewinsky, overseer of Test Subject 02. After six unsuccessful attempts, we finally have a stable test subject who has yet to show any complications upon its birth. Heart rate is steady, respiratory system functioning fully, and all cognitive responses seem to be normal. No visible defects as of yet. Seeing as the test subject has only just been born, I will be overseeing the care of it. Preliminary testing will begin once we are sure it can withstand as much.”

The video cut out, and immediately left a sour taste at the back of Tony’s throat. He assumed, when Lewinsky said ‘test subject’ and ‘it’, she meant Peter. He tapped his hand against the desk impatiently. “Jay, autoplay the rest. I’ll tell you when to stop.”  
A short confirmation from the AI, and then another video began to pop up. This time, the video was not focused on her, but was propped up and recording the room. In the center, there was a small medical cot, and within, Tony saw a squirming mess that must have been Peter. He was silent- sleeping, maybe.

“December 7th, 2015,” she began, “after a successful two months in which no problems have arisen post-partum for the subject, initial testing for Superhumanism will begin. We’ll start with noises at different pitches, and see whether it elicits any sort of response from it.” She walked further in, peering down at the cot as she placed earphones over her own head.

Then the noise sounded out, loud enough to make even Tony wince.

For the next two minutes he watched, horrified as they – for lack of a better word-- tortured the two-month old baby to try and see whether he would respond. Peter screamed and cried, legs kicking out in distress as he lifted his arms up and begged to be held. But what was worse was that not one single person in the room even batted an eye, except for Lewinsky herself, who began to get slightly agitated toward the end. She eventually motioned for the noise to be cut off, and as the pitch faded away, Peter’s crying remained, loud and horrible and sad.

Tony took back all previous apologies he’d made to her while he’d rifled through her phone. He hoped this bitch was rotting in hell.

“No visible results,” she declared, clipped, “more tests will be done tomorrow in order to see whether the test subject reacts to different stimuli.”

The video cut off, and Tony shut his eyes tightly, taking a few steadying breaths. He made the decision right there and then that he was going to torch that entire fucking facility to the ground. How sick… how  _twisted_ could you be? To do that to a  _baby?_

He braced himself as the next video came up, knowing that it was going to be the same stuff. Over and over again, each video, they did different experiments on the tiny little baby in the crib. Tony watched their joy as they discovered Peter’s adhesive abilities, watched their irritation mount higher when they stopped being able to get anything else out of him. Tony felt sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t stop viewing it all as it unfolded in front of him. He  _had_ to view it. He felt like he owed it to the boy three floors above him, even if Peter wasn’t even aware of anything that was going on. Someone had to watch this happen and care about it. No one else who’d been seeing this ever had.

As the videos went on and the months passed, Tony watched Lewinsky appear to become more and more removed, quiet, subdued. She watched on while they continued to experiment, but she often cut the tests short, and Tony noticed she began to pick Peter up from the crib herself and take him away back to his nursery. If Tony was being objective—which he wasn’t, Lewinsky was a fucking monster and she had no soul—he’d have hypothesised that the woman was slowly getting attached.

That was proven on the thirtieth video. This one wasn’t taken in a lab. This one was taken in a bathroom, the camera perched awkwardly on the sink as she herself sat on the edge of the bathtub. She looked ill. Her eyes seemed haunted.

“February 19th, 2016,” she began quietly, biting her lip, “I named the test subject, today. They told me never to do that, because it would give him an identity and we’d get attached. But I think I’ve already been compromised.” She looked down, smiling faintly. “Peter suits him, anyway.”

Tony’s lip curled in disgust, watching as her head bowed and she remained silent for a few seconds, stewing in her own guilt. Good.

“They don’t know what I know about him,” she continued, “their tests aren’t doing anything other than hurting him now. But he’s smart—I think there’s got to be some sort of accelerated cognitive capabilities involved here, because he’s coming along leaps and bounds without much help from us at all. He’s strong too… he can break things that babies shouldn’t be able to break. Lift things. Superhuman strength should have been added to his file weeks ago, but if I tell them he’s capable of more, they’re going to do more experiments on him. I don’t want that to happen. Not any more.” 

Her face twisted and she gripped tight to the edge of the tub. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This  _needs_ to be done, for the sake of science, for progress. Supersoldiers haven’t been seen outside of Steve Rogers in the last hundred years, and AIM having control over one, possibly even an army of them—would be revolutionary. I know this. I need to… remember this.”

 _He’s a baby,_  Tony thought savagely,  _not a weapon, not a soldier- he’s a baby boy, you sick, twisted fucking son of a bitch-_

She moved jerkily, cutting out the video, and he seethed in his chair, trying to remember how to breathe. A second later, the next clip popped up. Tony blinked, recognising the ensemble she was wearing. They were the same clothes she’d worn when the police had found her, shot in the room of a motel.

She was holding Peter in her arms.

“March 1st, 2016,” she said shakily, rocking him against her hip as he slept soundly. He was bigger than he had been in the first few videos; looked a little healthier and like the Peter that Tony knew. “I can’t do this any more. I can’t watch them hurt him. So I’m leaving, and I’m getting him somewhere where I know he’ll stand a chance of being safe. Where exactly that is, I’m not sure yet. But I… I can’t just stand by any more. Somehow, Peter has managed to retain his soul throughout this. He can still smile, still be happy. I’ve been helping him a little, and I think he’s even starting to get to grips with phonetics. If I can get him somewhere safe and normal quickly, he may still have a chance to— to be a child.”

She looked straight at the camera, eyes watery, lip quivering. Tony could sense the fear, ripping out of her in waves. “I know what this means for me,” she whispered, “I know what AIM do to traitors. But maybe… my soul for his. That won’t grant me a place in heaven, God no, but it will clear my conscience a little. So I’m taking him to New York. I’ll see if I can get in touch with someone who knows where to keep him. Or maybe I’ll leave him with the Avengers. They’ve always been good at fucking up everything we do here. Anyway… this’ll probably be my last log. I’m putting all the information in a ZIP file on my mobile. If anyone is watching this…”

She looked down at Peter, shutting her eyes as one tear slipped down her cheek. “Keep him safe,” she finished, “AIM won’t stop or give up the search for him. He’s special—moreso than anyone knows. Just… keep him safe.”  
  
Then the video cut out. That was the last one on the file. No more. Can’t have been more than 48 hours later that they shot her.  
  
He didn’t feel any sympathy. Didn’t think he could, after what he’d seen her do to Peter in the beginning. So fucking what, she’d come around to her human side in the end and done what any sane person would do—that didn’t make everything else go away.   
Oh God. Peter.

  
He lurched up from his desk, blinking rapidly and trying to pull back a little composure he hadn’t even been aware that he’d lost. There was more data that he needed to encrypt, a location that he needed to track and such. But he wasn’t really thinking about that just then- there was only one relevant thought chuntering around in his groggy, cotton-filled brain, and it was that he needed to find Peter. Now.

The elevator ride up was silent, and he stared at the wall the whole time, the echoes of the little boy’s distress starting up in his ears, muted and horrible. He wanted to be sick. He knew, objectively, that that had been going on before Peter had arrived to them. He wasn’t stupid. But there was a sharp reality to it all now that Tony hadn’t had before. There was solid evidence of what they’d done.

  
They hadn’t even given him a  _name_. He was ‘it’, he was Test Subject 02. Peter loved bubbles and Peppa Pig and dumb kiddie shit like people blowing raspberries on his belly when they were changing his diaper, and a few months ago, he’d been nothing more than a weapon. A product to be tested.   
It was more than just sick. It was… something else entirely. Something Tony couldn’t even put a name on. Inhumane, maybe. But even that just seemed too trivial.

  
The communal floor hit him with a wave of laughter as he stepped inside, and he stared numbly, watching the scene unfold around him. Thor was running around in the massive living room, leaping over couches and vaulting the countertops whilst Steve followed in hot pursuit, Peter tucked firmly into his side. The boy was cackling maniacally, arms outstretched, trying to grab the God of Thunder. “You can’t run forever!” Steve called out to the other man, who only let out a boom of laughter and then army-rolled away from Steve’s swiping hand.

Tony watched, not registering the greeting Bruce sent his way from the kitchen. The man was preparing dinner, probably—it was a Sunday, so they all ate together. He thought Nat and Clint were probably in the kitchen too, but he didn’t turn to check.   
Since their bare-all conversation during bath time just over a week ago now, Steve’s whole attitude toward Peter had done a 180. It had taken a little encouragement here and there, and Tony still saw the brief look of panic in the man’s eyes when Peter started to cry while Steve was holding him, but Captain America was nothing if not adaptable. It seemed that all he’d needed was someone to say that they trusted him not to mess up, and suddenly Steve was all over the little boy, picking him up and tossing him into the air easily with a huge beam on his face or helping out with mealtimes, ever-patient and collected even when Peter threw his mash potatoes all over the room.

And of course, in response to Steve’s sudden surge of affections, Peter had gotten the chance to properly bond with him for the first time, leading to instant attachment—predictable, really, seeing as it was Steve and he was impossible not to fall in love with, no matter what age you were. Peter now asked Steve to pick him up for cuddles as well as Tony, he always crawled over to Steve on the couch (probably because the guy was a human heater and Peter, much like Tony, was attracted to the warmth of his cuddles) and, obviously, Steve absolutely doted on him in return. They were adorable together, and sometimes when Tony saw Steve holding Peter up to eye level in his huge hands and brush their noses together just to watch the little boy giggle, he had to do a double take in order to not think about how similar the two of them looked.

It was the paternal little goblin in his brain, just desperate for a reason to call them a family. Hell—if Peter looked like anyone, it was probably Tony. They had the same hair and, according to Natasha, the same ears. Not that he’d really paid much attention to Peter’s ears. Or his own, for that matter.

“Tony?” Steve asked, and oh, Tony was in front of him. He hadn’t even realised he’d been walking. “Are you okay? You look—”

Tony didn’t wait for him to finish. He lifted his hands and slowly tugged Peter out of Steve’s arms, pulling him into his chest. God, he was  _tiny_. He was tiny and small and vulnerable and they’d done all those horrible, awful things to him while he’d screamed and cried and—

“S’okay,” he muttered, moving his hand to cradle the back of Peter’s head, run through the little boy’s downy curls, “I’ve got you. You’re okay now. You're okay, squirt, I swear, I... fuck.  _God.”_

Peter stilled in his arms, looking up at Tony with his huge blue eyes, interested by this unusual change in behavior. Tony made sure to smile reassuringly at him before leaning down and pressing a little kiss against Peter’s temple. He could feel his hands shaking, but he made sure not to squeeze too tight. He wouldn’t hurt him.

“Sweetheart,” Steve was there when Tony opened his eyes again, looking deeply concerned as he settled his hand down against Tony’s shoulder, the other one brushing Peter’s back, “what’s wrong? What happened? You look… is everything okay?”

Tony swallowed the bile in his throat and rocked Peter gently in his arms, Steve’s hand a warm and comforting weight against his shoulder, shielding him and Peter from the rest of the world. He shook his head mutely, not knowing what to say. “In the… I watched. There was- uh—her phone. It… I watched them—” he cut off, voice wavering into nothingness. He couldn’t even fucking  _say it_ , God, he’d watched people’s heads get cut clean off and not reacted as badly as this.

It was just… Peter was a baby. Peter was the purest form of human goodness you could get, where he’d done  _nothing_ wrong, where the was no evil in his heart or sins to his name and they’d done that to him, for months—

He shuddered violently, feeling the clammy coldness of his own skin. It was over now. Done. Finished. Peter was here, and he was safe, and that was what mattered.

Steve frowned, not making sense of the words. Thor, who apparently had come to see what the problem was, spoke up before Tony could try again, however. “You unlocked the dead woman’s phone,” he summarised, voice grave. Tony glanced at him, and then nodded once. Under his nose, Peter smelled like babies and a little bit of Steve’s aftershave. He just tried to focus on that.

Steve’s face stilled as he put two and two together. “You watched them… hurting him, didn’t you,” he whispered, looking down at Peter as he played with Tony’s tie, completely oblivious.  
Tony wondered whether he dreamed about, on those nights when they both woke up to the sound of crying from the crib. He wondered whether Peter, on some level, was aware of what had been done to him.

Tony nodded, hoisting Peter a little higher up into his arms and then pushing into Steve’s hold in an attempt to just find something to ground him. He felt wildly off-balance. Furious and angry and heartbroken and scared, completely fucking terrified. “He was two months old,” he whispered, “it’s a miracle he even… God, they didn’t—I just—”

“It’s okay,” Steve said, voice calm and gentle as he pulled Tony’s head into his neck and wrapped his strong arms around Tony’s shoulders, embracing both Tony and Peter in a hug. “it’s over now. Peter’s here. He’s not going to be hurt like that again. We won’t let them.”

In his arms, Peter was now starting to chew on Tony’s tie, making little sounds now and then. He seemed unfazed by the two large humans that were pressing him in on both sides, and Tony looked down, watching as Peter beat a little fist against Steve’s shirt in an attempt to grab his attention. Steve glanced at him, giving the boy a tight smile.

“Did the footage reveal anything else of interest?” Thor asked with a deep frown, folding his arms into his chest and pulling his jaw tight. “anything we could use to find them?”

“He’s got enhanced strength, too,” Tony responded after a second of thought, pulling away from Steve’s hold with a small sniff. He needed to fucking compose himself. “Uh. The woman, she was an AIM scientist in charge of looking after him. Left video logs. She said his motor skills were exceptional for his age and he showed signs of an above-average strength. There’s probably more information in there. I—I’ll need to look it over—”

“Not right now,” Steve said swiftly, taking Tony’s face in his hand and looking down at him seriously, “you’re upset. Which is what I’d expect after seeing something like that. But you need to give yourself a little bit of time before you try and look at that stuff again, and I don’t want you doing it alone. Let’s just… eat dinner first, put Peter to bed, and then decide what we’re gonna do with all the files and stuff, okay?” He swallowed and blinked a few times, looking down at Peter and shucking him gently on the chin, making the boy’s face crinkle up. Steve smiled. “Look at him, Tony. He’s okay now. He’s safe. Happy. Just focus on that, sweetheart.”

Tony didn’t want Steve to look at the videos. Steve had a guilt complex to rival Tony’s on a good day, and no doubt as soon as Steve took one look at what AIM had been getting up to, it’d be a battle just to try and keep him from turning completely feral and going on a manhunt for everyone responsible. Tony wouldn’t exactly be opposed to that either- but he knew, objectively, that if they wanted to make AIM pay, they would have to do it in a way that stuck. Find enough information to raze that division to the ground and prevent them from even so much as thinking of trying again.  
He supposed, however, that being in company as he went through more of the data would probably be comforting. At the very least, it was someone to share his anger with. Someone who understood in the same way Tony did.

He took in an anchoring breath and pressed his mouth into the top of Peter’s head once more. The baby gurgled happily. Safe, safe, safe and protected. “He’s ruining your tie,” Steve murmured softly, trying to tug the silk out of Peter’s mouth. Unfortunately, it seemed like a lost cause; Peter held firm with his teeth, and after a second or two Steve simply gave up with a defeated shrug. 

“I’ve got a lot of ties,” Tony responded, “I think I can let him have this one.”

“Guys!” Clint shouted from the kitchen, dragging their attention away from the scene in front of them as they turned to face him, “don’t know what kind of mother’s meeting is going on in there, but Dinner’s ready, so get your asses over here before Bruce steals it all.”

There was a weak protest from Bruce as his name was sullied, but ultimately died down when he realised that Clint was only telling the truth. Tony glanced over at Steve, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. He still felt a little unsteady, but it was better now that he was holding the kid in his arms. Solid evidence that he was okay. Tony had never really imagined himself to be a paternal sort of guy, but when he looked down at Peter, the urge to look after him and protect him and keep him safe from all harm was so strong that it ached in his chest worse than the arc reactor did. The Avengers tower was the last place on Earth Tony had ever thought would be suitable for a child of his age, and yet now it was hard to even imagine him anywhere else. They’d sort of learned how to handle all the baby elements, and now Bruce didn’t even run and hide at the prospect of changing his diaper. Steve and Tony had a system for when Peter woke in the night, Thor was uncannily good at getting the little boy to eat everything on his plate and he always got the morning shift, and Clint & Nat both revelled in finding ways to entertain him. Tony thought that maybe Natasha even enjoyed it unironically- the chance at playing make believe, being a child in a way she’d never gotten to do before.

Peter had the whole team wrapped around his stubby little finger, and none of them even cared. It was… weird. But a good sort of weird. A  _right_ sort of weird.

Tony tried not to think about the implications of that too hard as he sat down at the table and placed Peter in his high-chair next to Thor. The rest of the team were sharing glances at him, noticing his tension and wondering whether or not to ask, but Tony saw Steve shake his head minutely in their direction and they hastily began to talk about something different and entirely mundane. Tony appreciated that. The noise was nice. He looked down at Peter as Thor meticulously began to cut up his pieces of soft chicken, brow furrowed with concentration, and the scene made him smile. They’d learned that Peter needed his food squares to be just so, otherwise he’d refuse to eat them, and now Thor had taken to that challenge like the fate of the nine realms depended on it.

“You know,” Clint said, loud enough that it pulled Tony’s focus away from the two people beside him, “I think he’s really close to saying his first words. I swear to god he managed to get Bruce’s name out this morning.”

“It was hardly my name,” Bruce rolled his eyes and leaned back on his chair, “more like a gargle that started with a ‘B’.”

“It was close enough! Don’t undermine Pete’s hard work like that,” Clint leaned forward and looked at Peter seriously while the boy picked up a piece of meat and tried (and failed) to make it reach his mouth. “Say ‘Bruce Banner’ for me, squirt. Prove all these fuddy-duddy’s wrong.”

In response, Peter drooled a little bit, and Thor wiped it away with an absent finger. “Perhaps we can save the lessons for after mealtime?” He asked, leaning over and shoving Clint’s face away promptly. That made Peter cackle, and a chewed-up piece of chicken fell out of his mouth and onto the high-chair below.

Clint pulled a face, but leaned back all the same. “I’ll show you all,” he muttered, “he’s a child prodigy, I’m calling it now.”

“Okay, well let’s not start putting those sort of pressures on the kid  _now_ —he can’t even eat on his own, Clint,” Steve shook his head and leaned down, spearing a potato into his fork. “Maybe wait until the kid can say a full sentence before signing him up for MENSA.”

“If I get him to say Bruce’s name in the next week, will you rescind that statement and let me groom him into a little baby genius? He can be like Tony two-point-oh.”

“No one is grooming anyone into geniuses,” Natasha cut in firmly, her face a little pinched as she added “he might not even  _be_ here in a week, Clint.”

Everyone went quiet at that, as the realisation sunk in. Natasha was right; they were getting too far ahead of themselves. Tony watched as Steve’s jaw tightened fractionally and turned back to his dinner plate, and Thor’s smile slipped quickly off his face. Natasha just sighed and then attempted to pull the topic back onto lighter ground. “But honestly, I agree with Clint. Peter seems to be working beyond the capabilities of an average kid his age, so who knows. Maybe we do have a prodigy on our hands.”

They all murmured their agreements and quickly moved on, but Tony noticed that Steve was quiet beside him- he hadn’t ever thought a man could eat potatoes morosely, but Steve seemed to be doing it pretty well. When Tony squeezed his thigh and raised his eyebrows askingly, however, Steve merely schooled his face back into a smile and then shook his head, quickly slipping back into the conversation and giving Tony the impression it wasn’t something that needed talking about.

Dinner morphed into bedtime, and Steve took bathing duties while Tony set about preparing Peter’s evening bottle of formula. He walked back up to their room just as Steve was walking out of the bathroom with a cosily burrito’ed baby in his arms, and Tony heard the tail-end of Steve’s little conversation with the boy- something about rationed bathwater that they’d used to have in the forties. He grinned when Steve looked up at him, and willingly accepted the pile of towel and baby that was handed over to him when they met in the middle of the room.

“Mind if you do the honours while I grab a shower?” Steve asked, wrinkling his nose a little and poking Peter in the side accusingly. “He peed on me while I was changing his diaper.”

Tony gasped, looking down at Peter in mock horror, while Peter just sucked on his thumb and looked innocently back at him, uncaring of their judgement. “You just urinated on an American Icon, Petey-Pie. I hope you know that.”

It didn’t seem to faze the kid much; his fist balled up, but that was about all the reaction they got out of him. Steve shook his head fondly and leaned over, kissing Tony on the tip of the nose before turning away back into the direction of the bathroom. Tony was pretty sure he heard Steve repeat the little pet-name Tony had just said through a small breath of laughter, but he wasn’t sure, and a second later Steve’s ankle knocked the door half-shut, shielding him from view.

Tony glanced back down at Peter. The hood of his sleep-suit was up and covering most of his forehead and part of his eye, and Tony gently pushed it back with a finger, pulling a face when Peter caught his eye. And if Tony hadn’t known any better, he could’ve sworn the six-month old managed to look unimpressed by it.

He sat them both down on their bed gently, flicking on the TV and turning to one of the mundane children’s channels that he now had installed into it. Peter was starting to flag as bedtime approached, but he took the bottle when Tony directed it toward him, his hands coming up to clasp clumsily around the perimeter of the bottle. Tony gently let go to see whether Peter could do it on his own, and after a few attempts at hitting his mouth, the kid effectively managed to grip and drink without much help from Tony at all. The words of Lewinsky and Clint came back to him vaguely:  _Advanced for his age, prodigy, accelerated learning capabilities._

He’d heard all of that stuff before. He remembered how much he’d hated them, too.

“You know, if you  _do_ turn out to be a super mega genius,” Tony began quietly as Peter’s eyes fixed onto him intently, listening in to the best of his ability, “just remember that whatever you do, never try and be smart for other people. People knew I was a smart kid too. It… well, it sucked, actually. Everyone was always pushing and pushing and pushing, and I just wanted to play with my toys, but then someone would come in and tell me I had to do work instead, and I wanted to show them how smart and clever I was, so I’d do it. But I missed out on the playing. I missed out on a lot of things that most kids should have had.” Tony frowned, readjusting Peter in his arms and then listening to the sound of that inane fucking cartoon about the talking lemon and dead-eyed yellow dog play on the TV in front of him.

“Make sure to be a kid, too,” he finished with a firm nod, knowing that Peter was going to understand absolutely none of this, “and I mean, if it does turn out you’re just an Average Joe in the IQ section of things, then at least you have one less superpower to worry about. You’re gonna have a lot on your plate already, I think.”

His mind went back to the videos, wondering how many other enhancements Peter possessed that AIM didn’t know about. The adhesive capabilities were all they were aware of, but Lewinsky had seen signs of augmented strength too, and God only knew what else might start to crop up as Peter grew. It was probably for the best that the kid ended up with Xavier- he was good at handling shit like this. The Avengers were more punchy-kicky than… baby.

 

Peter would be fine. He’d be safe and happy, and no one would hurt him once Tony got to the bottom of exactly who was behind all this.

  
“Hey,” Steve murmured quietly, and Tony jumped when he realised that his partner had come back into the room once more and was sliding onto the bed, arm wrapping around Tony’s waist and pulling him in. He was still a little damp, and he smelled like fresh apples from his body wash. Tony leaned into it happily. “You think he’s ready to settle now?”

“Mm, probably,” Tony agreed, licking his lips nervously as he thought about what awaited for him when they got Peter to bed. He still had to go through all that fucking data. All the information and files. It wasn’t going to be fun.

Seemingly sensing his tension, Steve sighed and kissed his temple reassuringly. “You don’t have to do this tonight,” he murmured against Tony’s skin, “we have time. Another one of us could do it instead—”

“No,” Tony said firmly, shaking his head and looking down, quickly plucking the bottle from Peter’s hands before the boy could throw it uncaringly onto the bed. “No, I need to… I can track them fastest. I’ll be okay.”

Steve didn’t argue. He knew it was true, and this was beyond their own personal issues with it. This was about Peter’s safety—and that was fast becoming one of the most important priorities they had, period. “I’ll be there with you,” he offered instead, “you won’t have to look at it all alone.”

“Steve, you don’t have to—”

“I know.” Steve glanced sideways, absently tucking a damp strand of Peter’s hair back behind his ear. “Let’s put him to bed, shall we?”

Tony let Steve slip Peter into his own hold and then gently carry him over to the cot backed up against the opposing wall. Peter was pretty much already asleep by then, his eyelids drooping adorably and his tiny body engulfed by the yellow duck-patterns of his sleepsuit. He was definitely cutest little kid Tony had ever seen—and that wasn’t even biased, it was just true. No other baby even compared, most of them were ugly and looked all weird, like aliens. Peter was perfect though. Obviously.

Okay… maybe Tony had a  _little_ bias. Whatever.

Across the room, Steve was rocking Peter gently in his arms, humming another Gaelic lullaby that he knew from memory. Tony loved it when Steve sang those lullabies in his off-tune voice, and it worked like a dream, always sending Peter off to sleep with the strangely enrapturing words. Steve caught Tony watching him and smiled a little bashfully, tongue tripping over one of the lyrics as he lowered Peter down into the crib with practiced grace, tucking the blanket up over his body and then making sure no limb was exposed. Tony loved the care Steve put into every action regarding Peter. There wasn’t a single movement that wasn’t accounted for and thought over; Steve moved like a ballet dancer even when he wasn’t around the baby, but whenever Peter was in his arms, it was like all that dialled up to eleven. He held him softly, just like Tony had taught him. He combed Peter’s hair meticulously, making sure any tangles were dealt with painlessly, even if it took him double the time.   
He was just… soft. It was a wonderful look on him.

“Quit starin’, creep,” Steve said, not looking up from where he was plumping Peter’s little pillow, and Tony just grinned as he slipped off the bed and then padded over to wind his arms around Steve from behind, chin resting on the man’s shoulder.

“But you’re just so pretty from the back, sweetheart,” he said, “can’t help myself.” To prove his point, he grabbed Steve’s ass and squeezed playfully, watching in amusement as he jolted and bit down on a small noise. He turned and shoved Tony lightly, waving to Peter.

“Do  _not_ grab my ass in front of the kid, Stark.”

“Aw, come on, he’s sleeping!” Tony whispered, poking Steve in the butt again. He watched Steve hold back a small laugh and bat Tony’s hand away, beginning to push him out of the room exasperatedly and without too much noise.

“You’re incorrigible,” Steve informed him when they shut the door behind them a few seconds later.

Tony just shrugged, leaning against the wall. “I deserve my ass-grabbing. I’m about to go and spend the rest of my night getting really angry about AIM’s shitty moral compass. Let me have my fun.”

Steve’s smile flickered and became a little strained, but his back straightened and he took Tony’s hand all the same, firm and unwavering. Steve was a supporting strut—without him, some days, Tony knew he’d just collapse. 

“You’ve got me this time around,” he promised, giving their hands a small squeeze, “and we’re not going to watch anything else. JARVIS can just relay any important information back to us.”

Tony was probably going to have to argue that later— there were some things that really did require a human eye to analyse everything, and they couldn’t afford to miss out on a single detail here— but for now he just let it lie with one curt nod. At least Steve didn’t have to see any of the initial testing. That was a positive. He didn’t need to watch something like that; it wouldn’t be good for him. 

“Guess we should get digging then,” Tony said with a shrug of his shoulders, trying to squash down the wave of apprehension that curled over his chest. It wasn’t going to be fun, but it was going to be necessary. For Peter’s sake.   
  
Of course, Tony was correct. It wasn’t fun at all. He and Steve religiously trawled through each segment of information in Tony’s workshop, hunting for extra information, anything at all that they could find. Unfortunately, it seemed that Lewinsky’s work had only been about developmental milestones after his birth and not any of the science behind Peter’s initial creation or the DNA that he was carrying. That seemed to have been the responsibility of a different faction. Tony had thrown back a glass and a half of whiskey before he’d started looking through the files again, unable to handle it all without the Dutch Courage of alcohol to ease his way, and even then, his hands never stopped shaking, not for the whole night. Steve wasn’t much better either—he was quiet, achingly quiet, as he looked through all the information Lewinsky had on her phone, and every twenty minutes or so he abruptly left the room for a short while in order to take a small break from it all.

It was heavy stuff. Sickening, heavy stuff.

 

“We’re killing them, right?” Tony asked suddenly after the second hour, when they were close to coming to the end of all the data. His voice sounded eerily loud in the silence of the room, and Steve glanced up at him from his tablet, face set grimly, hands white-knuckled.

“Even that feels too kind,” Steve muttered, voice twisting in disgust, “too merciful, after what they did to him.”

“Then what should we do?”

Steve didn’t respond for a beat. He looked up to the roof instead, and usually it would be an indication that he was about to speak to JARVIS, but he didn’t. Tony got the feeling he was thinking of the little baby boy that was currently sleeping soundly in their room, tucked up under a soft blankey and wrapped in a sleepsuit covered with little toy ducks.

“I dunno,” he said eventually, voice softening. He looked back at Tony and shook his head. “But I know we’re gonna find them. And we’re gonna make them fucking pay.”

A thought struck Tony, then, and it made him spasm in revulsion. “What if there are more of them?”

“More of what?” Steve asked, before the penny dropped and his face paled even further. “More kids,” he responded to his own question, voice dull, expression horrified.

Tony just nodded, looking back at the desk. More children, being put through hell because AIM wanted soldiers. More babies like Peter, potentially, who didn’t have the luck that Peter had. Who hadn’t made it out.

“Then we find them,” Steve’s voice permeated his ears, a hand settling on Tony’s leg, steadying him. Tony glanced up at him, saw the resolve and angry determination in Captain America’s eyes. “We find them and we get them safe. We will, Tony. You know we will.”

He nodded. He couldn’t stop seeing the diminutive form of Peter, one month old, crying and screaming for someone to hold him, never being touched. Being called ‘Test Subject’. Nothing more than an experiment.   
Not any more. Fuck, fuck, not any more.

“Let’s call it a night,” he blurted, standing up very suddenly. “There’s nothing else here of importance and we know it. I don’t… I wanna see Peter again. Just. You know. To check.”

He thought Steve might look at him a little strangely for that admission, but the man just sighed in relief and stood up, nodding. “Me too,” he whispered, “God, come on. JARVIS, pack up in here for us, will you?”

“Of course, Sirs.”

They didn’t waste time. Both of them were unsteady on their feet as they exited, desperate to leave the somewhat crushing space of the workshop filled with all that horrible knowledge. Tony had never been afraid of information, but looking through those files had just felt like the potential for a fresh horror each time, and it had made him more scared than he probably should have been. He wasn’t even sure why it had all reacted so badly within him; objectively, he knew that he’d seen worse- more foul human acts, more gruesome scenes of torture. Relatively speaking, it was mild. But maybe because Peter was with them now, and he was a baby, and like Tony had said at the very beginning- he had a duty of care, it just made everything feel so much more horrific. To think of him in that horrible place… it was like a nightmare. One that Tony could only hope to God the kid would never be able to remember.

They arrived at their room quietly and Steve slipped in first, footfalls light so as not to stir the sleeping boy in the cot on the other side of the room. Tony followed his footsteps as Steve went over to it, and soon both of them were peering over the bars, checking on the boy that they knew was tucked up, totally safe and sound asleep.   
Steve sighed, hands curling around the rim of the crib and shoulders hunching inward. He stared intently down at Peter and worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “I still feel like I might break him at any given moment,” he admitted, voice nothing over a murmur, “but now— now I’m kinda glad I’m so strong. All I want to fuckin’ do is find out who hurt this kid and just—”

“Put all that muscle to good use?” Tony finished, and when Steve nodded, Tony slipped his hand over Steve’s, curling their fingers into one another. “We will, Steve. I promise we will.”

Steve just nodded, a promise. He looked across at Tony and then shut his eyes as a small smile flicked across his mouth. “He’s got a crazy maniacal laugh, you know. Have you heard it? When something is just so funny he can’t control it, his laugh sounds like a super villain. I feel I should be hearing it from Doctor Doom.”

Tony huffed and nodded his head. “Yeah, he threw a spoon at me yesterday and then guffawed like he was about to attempt world domination. Little kid’s an asshole.”

“Quick learner, then,” Steve shot him a wry expression, “takes it from his—well, uh— his temporary guardian, I guess.”

They both paused. “Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as the phrase you were gonna say,” Tony admitted, a tired grin tugged half-heartedly at his lips. He leaned further into Steve’s side, unwilling to let himself wish that Steve had just said the damn word. Even if it was stupid. Obviously, he hadn’t got it from his dad, because Peter was not… but still. It was nice to deal in hypotheticals, occasionally.

Steve looked down at him, and for a second it was like he knew exactly what Tony was thinking—but then he just wrapped his arm around Tony’s waist and pecked a kiss against his temple. “Let’s get to bed,” he said,” s’late.”

Tony agreed. He was wiped, and fell into the mattress easily with Steve wrapped around him. Tony could still feel the tension running deep within the other man, but he could hardly be blamed for it either. It’d been a rough night on both of them, but Tony hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that Steve doted on the little boy. For all his drooling and loudness and general baby-behaviour that definitely should have put off the entire team weeks ago, Peter still seemed to have managed to wheedle his way very firmly into every single one of their hearts anyway. It was his gummy smile; the way he held up his hands for cuddles whenever one of them passed. It was how he always cackled when Steve whizzed him around the room and how he adored the reactor’s light in Tony’s chest.

He was just—sweet. Steve loved him, it was obvious. And Steve took very seriously to people harming those he loved. Tony knew this from experience—God, by the end of his own attempted kidnapping last year, he’d actually felt sorry for the bad guys.

The tension in Steve’s muscles was full of anger, need for a fight. Tony knew he wouldn’t stop until he got one, and won it.

Which was good. Because neither would Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love making steve and Tony dote on babies is that obvious? it feels obvious?   
> Anyway new chapter will be released as and when I reach my donation target on kofi, so stay tuned (hopefully) for more!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bruh im sorry this took so long, but!!!! it is here now, and I made it extra long to make up for the wait!

“Okay, have you got Sleepyhead the Seal? He won’t go to bed without it.” Tony watched Steve look around the kitchen absently, one hand still laying softly atop Peter’s little head as the child sat tucked in Thor’s arms. “I gave you Sleepyhead, yeah?”

Thor just laughed. “Yes, Steve, we have the seal. And his dummy, and his special green plate, and everything else you’ve told us about. You know, considering you’re only going out for a few hours, I feel as if you’re overreacting just a touch here.”

“I’m not—” Steve’s cheeks flushed, and he stroked his hand through Peter’s downy hair once more before stepping away and shrugging nonchalantly. Peter glanced up at him, hands going upward to try and get back the fingers that had previously been running through his hair. He was such an attention-seeker, honestly. “I’m not overreacting. I just know how difficult he can get if you don’t get him down properly.”

Quietly, Tony agreed with Thor. But he also understood exactly where Steve was coming from, seeing as he’d gone through this exact same conversation with Clint a few minutes earlier. He and Steve were going out for a long overdue date night, so tonight they were leaving the rest of the team to get Peter to bed. It was a task that had been performed exclusively by Tony and Steve ever since Pete had arrived, and so handing over responsibility was proving… strangely difficult. Peter was notoriously hard to calm, and over the last few weeks he and Steve had worked out a very particular system for doing it. It was a careful process, with many steps involved. Tony and Steve leaving tonight may well prove cataclysmic.

Then again, it had been weeks since they’d had some time to themselves. Tony was sure that the Avengers could handle this.

Laughing gently, Tony stepped forward and wound his fingers through Steve’s, leaning into the man’s side. Steve glanced down at him, his lips quirking into an automatic smile. “We’re gonna be late for our 7:20 res,” Tony told him.

Steve sighed, turning back to Thor. “Alright, alright, let’s go.” He crouched down and got eye-level with Peter. “Behave yourself,” he told the boy solemnly, while Peter leaned forward and then grabbed his nose with a podgy fist. Steve huffed, tugging Peter’s hand away gently before ducking down and pressing a kiss to his soft head. Tony watched the interaction with a bitten-down smile, then pulled Steve off in the direction of the elevator. 

“Be good!” he yelled behind him with a wave of his hand.

“I’m sure Peter will be on his best behaviour,” Thor assured them, but Tony looked at the God over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

“Wasn’t talking to the baby.”

Steve rolled his eyes and shut the elevator, catching sight of a raised middle finger just before the doors closed behind them. Tony chuckled and leaned against Steve subconsciously, and the other man ducked his head, kissing Tony. “You look gorgeous,” he murmured, hands skimming across the suit material that fitted snugly around Tony’s waist.

“Of course I do,” Tony found Steve’s hands and pressed his own over the top of them, “do you know how much this outfit cost?”

“I don’t think I want to.”

Tony patted his cheek. “Good boy. You’re learning.”

Steve just laughed and then leaned back, sliding away in order to hold onto the railings behind him and look down at Tony. He looked absolutely ravishing; well fitted jeans and a blazer, with a dress shirt tucked in and creasing around washboard abs Tony knew were underneath. As he leaned back onto the rails, the fabric stretched to try and accommodate the flex of his muscles. Tony wanted to tear the whole thing right off him. Alas, there were a few more hours to go before Tony got to do that, so he resigned himself with simply observing. That was half of the fun anyway. 

He considered the night ahead of them, free for the first time in what felt like decades. No getting soaked from bath-time or spending an hour just trying to put a baby down to sleep. No bickering over who had to get up and take the morning shift while the other slept in. No, tonight, the rest of the team were in charge of the night-shift, leaving Steve and Tony in blissful peace.

“You think they’re gonna be okay?” He asked Steve, “I mean… Peter’s pretty fussy. He might not get any sleep at all tonight, and then his whole routine will get messed up—”

“Tony,” Steve said calmly, “I think we just need to trust them.”

Tony stilled, and then sighed in defeat. “Yeah. But Clint’s only just learned how to put himself to bed, so excuse me for being mildly concerned.” He rolled his eyes before fiddling with his cufflinks a little, wondering why exactly he was feeling so strange about this. It wasn’t even as if Peter was their kid or anything—but it just felt like they’d all been attached to one another by the hip recently, so leaving him, even if it was only for the night, felt… 

Well. Sort of wrong. 

“This is so weird, isn’t it?” Tony blurted, sniggering to himself as they arrived at the garage and then began walking over to his matte-black audi, made inconspicuous for Steve’s sake. “We’ve become the helicopter parents of a child we don’t even know.”

 Steve absent-mindedly opened the passenger door for Tony, a small frown on his face. “I wouldn’t say that,” he argued, “we definitely know him, at the very least.”

“But you admit to the helicopter parenting?” 

With the grace of a ballet dancer, Tony watched as Steve slid into the driver’s seat and pouted, thinking it over for a second. “All parents are like that in the beginning,” he settled with, shrugging his shoulders, “we’re no different.”

And that was when the cynical voice of Natasha kicked in in Tony’s brain, and the good mood soured just a fraction. He looked away, glancing down at his lap as the engine started, and although he wasn’t looking over at Steve, he knew the man had realised his blunder too. They were doing that more and more frequently, these days. Slipping up. Acting as if Peter was a permanent feature in their lives. Tony knew they had to get a grip on themselves— a tower full of Avengers was a totally unsuitable place for any child to stay, no matter how intense the baby-fever was hitting. 

But still. It was nice to pretend.

They drove mostly in comfortable silence, arriving at Lina’s with time to spare before their reservation, which was pretty much unheard of for the two of them. And of course, as soon as they got there it was a battle. Tony was determined to get Steve to try something new on the damn menu, but of course, Steve just wanted to stick with what he god damn knew. 

“It’s reliable,” he said primly, looking around for a waiter so they could come and take their order. Tony leaned forward and nudged his head back to the table. 

“It’s boring,” he declared, “try something else, Steve, anything. If you order that carbonara again you’re going to break my heart.”

“I am going to order the Carbonara and you are going to sit there and deal with it like a man.” Steve signalled to one of the waiters before Tony could grab his hand, and the young lady began hurrying over to them.

Tony groaned into the tablecloth, hearing Steve’s grin in the way he huffed. Some things never changed, of course. 

The night was perfect. Things always were, with him and Steve. They bickered over the wine and played footsie under the table, and Tony didn’t even complain when Steve stole a bite of his food. Mostly. He may have complained once. Passed a comment or two about how Steve could have also had this dish if he had just strayed from his stupid beloved carbonara. But Steve had just patted his hand and then stolen another bite, and Tony figured that next time he was going to have to use more devious methods to get out of his comfort zone. Perhaps of the sexual nature. He’d always been rather susceptible to those. 

They shared dessert, obviously, seeing as that was the one meal they could agree on. Warm chocolate fudge brownie and salted caramel ice-cream, because Steve had a sweet-tooth a mile wide and Tony just liked listening to the noises he made when he took the first mouthful. Positively sinful. 

“You know,” Steve said as he popped the spoon into his mouth and sucked off the last vestiges of ice cream, “most people would find it offputting to have someone watch them while they eat.”

“Luckily, you are not most people in any sense of the phrase,” Tony smiled at him and leaned forward on the table, chin resting upon his hand as he picked up his spoon and then scooped up the last chunk of brownie, “a bit of casual objectification means nothing to you.”

Steve shrugged, eyeing the bit of brownie swaying around in Tony’s hand. “Only if it’s you,” he commented, grabbing Tony’s wrist and then stilling the spoon. Tony just rolled his eyes as the other man manoeuvred it in his direction, and didn’t even fight when Steve popped it into his own mouth instead. “Not so great when Norma the nonagenarian is doing it at a fundraiser for sick kids.”

“Hey, don’t slam on your own kind, Steve, not everyone likes to cradle rob like you do.” Tony batted his eyelashes and waved to himself, and then they were off again, this time bickering about who was technically the cradle robber and who was the cradle robbed. They must have gone through this conversation a hundred times, yet they never got the definitive answer. Personally, Tony didn’t care—he just enjoyed watching Captain America wave his hands around and try to describe the logistics behind him being more fitted to the role of sugar baby in their relationship rather than cradle-robber. 

God, that was a phrase Tony had never thought he’d be thinking to himself. What a wonderful world. 

They paid ten minutes later, and were half-way back to the car when Tony’s phone rang. He frowned to himself as he pulled it out, because he was sure he’d put it on silent, and JARVIS only ever circumvented that order when it was an emergency call. And when he saw Clint’s ID on the front, his heart dropped. 

He wasted no time. “What’s wrong?”

Beside him, Steve stilled, and Tony pressed the phone to his ear while Clint started to speak. “You gotta get back to the tower right now, both of you,” he said, before adding on to the end, “it’s Peter.”

Oh God. Tony’s hand grabbed for Steve automatically, and he felt Steve reach back with a hissed-out curse, pushing them quickly toward the car, Tony stumbling over the curb in his haste to get into the passenger seat. He could feel his heart suddenly up in his throat, making his tongue heavy with terror. “What’s wrong?” He asked urgently, “Is he sick? Has someone taken him?”

“What?” Clint snorted, “no, don’t be stupid.” Tony stopped, looking at Steve and holding a hand across to him before the man began to drive like a maniac back toward the tower. “He’s just said his first words!”

Tony’s face fell, and he slumped back in the seat of the car. “I’m gonna skin you, Barton,” he snapped, “maybe fucking lead with that next time, asshole, I thought something bad had happened.”

“Don’t be paranoid,” Clint said nonchalantly, and yeah, Tony was definitely skinning him, “just get over here and see for yourself! They were totally words, by the way, before you try and rebuke me.”

Tony wanted to be pissed, but he was too curious. “What was the word?”

“He said Bruce’s name!” There was a short pause where someone else—possibly Thor—spoke, and then Clint huffed exasperatedly. “Okay, well, he missed out the ‘R’, so it’s not like, Shakespeare or something, but he was definitely pointing at Bruce when he said it! I’m telling you, the kid’s a genius. Fuck Xavier, we’re definitely gonna get him into MIT or Harvard or something—”

Tony ended the call before Clint could talk any further, letting the phone drop into his lap whilst he turned to eye Steve. The man seemed to be attempting to hide a smile. “Now if we go home it’s going to look like we actually listened to him.”

Tony paused, thinking it over. “Drive round the block a few times?” At Steve’s responding laugh, he too found himself chuckling, raising his hands in question. “What? I don’t want Clint to believe for a single second that we cut our date short because he believed Peter’s incomprehensible babbling to be—”

“— I love you,” Steve interrupted him, seemingly out of nowhere, taking his hand from the air and then pressing his mouth against the back of it. Tony quietened, his face softening as Steve smiled and shook his head. “Just thought you should know.”

“I love you too,” Tony responded, the words having no difficulty slipping off his tongue. He’d used to think it was so much harder than that, but it just wasn’t. Steve said it so much, so easily, at such otherwise meaningless points, that Tony had come almost to expect it. It was just a fact of his life. He was Iron Man. He was Tony Stark. He loved Steve, and Steve loved him, and said so whenever the thought came into his head. 

They smiled at each other for another moment or two, before Tony cleared his throat and patted Steve’s thigh. “Let’s go home and watch Peter try and pronounce a hard ‘R’ sound,” he declared, “but stop off at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way.”

“We have literally just come out of the restaurant, Tony.”

Tony just looked at him blankly, and eventually Steve sighed in defeat. He keyed the ignition. “Fine. But you’re buying me one of those salted caramel ones while you’re in there.”

“Deal.”

 

 _____

 

 

When they did end up getting back to the Tower, the penthouse floor was still abuzz with activity despite the relatively late hour. Steve and Tony shared a sigh when they realised that Peter was still up and sat on the table, banging a crayon uselessly against a white sheet of paper. Around him, the rest of the team were milling about on various bits of furniture, and Clint, of course, had taken residence on the top of the fridge for a reason that everyone had long-since given up trying to find.

“You had one job,” Steve declared, raising a finger at the child in the centre of the group, “put him to bed at a reasonable hour so that he doesn’t get cranky. It was so simple.”

“Yeah, but then he started speaking.” Thor poked his head around the corner of the fridge he was rifling through, grinning from ear to ear as he jerked a thumb over to Peter. “I was disbelieving at first too, but then he pointed at Bruce while saying his name, so I had no choice but to reward him with a late bedtime.”

“That’s not… Thor, he’s 7 months old,” Tony squinted at him, “he barely even has a concept of reward, and bed-time isn’t something he’s discovered he hates yet.”

Thor made an apologetic face, until the moment his eyes caught on the box in Steve’s hand and all pretences of sorrow were immediately replaced with lustful desire. “You went to Dunkin Donuts,” he exclaimed.

Steve raised a hand and stepped back at the same time Thor stepped forward. “No.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Tony patted him on the chest and then wandered into the kitchen at the same time Steve began to try and fend off whatever attack Thor was about to launch at him. Clint waved from on top of the fridge, and Tony just shot him the bird. “You’re a dick.”

Distantly, he heard Clint ask ‘what’d I do?’ behind him, but the man was no longer Tony’s centre of focus. He leaned both hands on the kitchen table and looked solemnly at Peter, who was now sucking the crayon idly as he scrunched up the corner of paper with his fist. When the boy noticed Tony,  he broke out into a gummy smile and held up his arms expectantly. 

“We leave for two hours,” Tony began sternly, “and look what you’ve done to my team. You’ve got them all wound up and hyper. It’ll take hours for them to settle down and go to bed now.”

“Mah!” Peter bounced up and down on his butt impatiently, and with a roll of his eyes, Tony gently picked him up and slotted him against his hip, watching as Peter began to wave his crayon around again.

“Aren’t you tired, little man?” Tony wandered over to the coffee machine as he talked, slipping by Natasha, who just smiled and ruffled both Tony and Peter’s hair. “It’s way past your bedtime. You’re sleeping with Thor tonight, by the way. I refuse to deal with you when you realise how valuable a good night’s rest is and start to scream about it to anyone who will listen.” He turned and glanced at Steve from across the room as he stood on the couch and tried to bat Thor’s hands away with his feet. “Plus, me and Steve need a little alone time. You’ve totally ruined our sex life since you arrived, you know.”

“Ugh, Peter does  _not_ need to hear that.” Clint jumped down from the fridge and then took Peter out of Tony’s arms, hoisting him up high and eliciting a cackle of delight from the small boy. Tony simply rolled his eyes and got started on making himself a coffee, watching Peter out of the corner of his vision with a smile on his face. 

“How was your evening?” Came a soft voice to his left, and he blinked and turned to Bruce, who’d quietly sidled up next to him. His hair was damp and his glasses skewed, with a tell-tale crisscross of indents on his cheek which implied he’d probably been napping by the TV until Steve and Thor had stormed in and woken him up, of course. 

Tony smiled, a warm feeling spreading through his chest. “It was nice,” he said simply, “he still hasn’t moved away from the Carbonara yet.”

“What? Seriously?”

“I know, it’s driving me mad!” Tony grabbed for a mug with a shake of his head, turning around just as he saw Thor tackle Steve right off the couch and send them both tumbling to the floor with a loud thud. Something cracked, and Tony just hoped it wasn’t a body part. “Why am I dating him again?”

Bruce looked at him dryly, and then without speaking, lifted his hands and made a length of approximately 8 inches between them. “That’s why.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Tony began, before pausing and then grabbing Bruce’s hand in order to add an extra inch to the distance, “ _that’s_ why.”

At that moment, Clint turned around and clocked that Bruce was back in the room, promptly ending their conversation as he rushed over to plonk Peter into Bruce’s surprised arms. The man blinked, then sighed. “Clint—”

“Peteroony,” Clint got down to eye level with the little boy, ignoring whatever it was that Bruce had been going to say, “can you say ‘Bruce’ for me? Come on—say ‘Bruce’.”

Peter stared vacantly up at Clint for a moment, before reaching out and grabbing his nose with an intrigued ‘phlrb’ sound. Tony just sighed fondly and turned back to his coffee. Clint sure loved to exaggerate, but most likely it was just one of Petey’s little sounds that he’d decided was definite proof that Peter was—

“Buce!” 

Tony snapped his head back to the pair in surprise, watching as Clint’s face contorted into one of delight and he punched the air triumphantly. Peter was smiling up at Bruce and clapping his hands together as best he could while Bruce nodded and confirmed, in his usual manner, “Yes, that’s me, Bruce Banner at your service.”

“Buce! Buce! Buban!”

“Oh my God.” Tony’s eyes widened as he moved forward, taking the little boy out of Bruce’s arms and holding Peter up with amazement. “That was Bruce’s name.” He turned his head back toward the living room. “Hey Steve! Peter really did just say Bruce’s name!”

A tuft of blond hair shortly followed by the rest of Steve’s head popped up from behind the couch. “Huh?” He asked, “So Clint wasn’t lying?”

“Not from what I’m hearing.” Tony watched as the man scrambled hurriedly off the couch and then walked over toward the kitchen, his face breaking out into a happy smile as he set his eyes on Peter. Tony handed him over as soon as he came close enough. “Just listen to him, Steve, he’s definitely saying Bruce’s—”

“Seev!”

Steve froze up, his mouth dropping open. Then he looked at Tony. “Did he just—”

“Buce!” Peter seemed to be having an absolute ball, with his new words, mouth split into a beam as he bashed his hands into Steve’s chest. “Buce, Seev, Seev, Seev!”

Tony couldn’t help it; he burst into laughter, looking between Steve’s incredulous expression and Peter’s delighted one. They were probably gonna pay for this tomorrow when Peter was cranky for the whole day, but in that moment, he couldn’t care less. Peter was  _saying their names._ A little shoddily, sure, but Tony could let it slide considering that the boy wasn’t even out of diapers yet. 

He watched Steve as the man applauded Peter’s excellent work, bouncing him up and down in his arms excitedly and looking over at Bruce and Tony every two seconds to make sure they were still watching in case Peter said anything else. The last time Tony had seen the guy this happy was probably when he’d been introduced to Meryl Streep that one time back in 2013, which was saying something, because Steve  _loved_ Meryl Streep. But right now Peter might as well have just recited an extract from Jane Austen by the way Steve was reacting to it. Tony figured that poor Meryl now paled in comparison. 

As she should. Because Peter was talking. And Tony knew it was dumb, of course, but he just… he felt so strangely proud of that. Like they’d helped. Which, you know, they probably had. It wasn’t exactly like Peter had had much affection or encouragement before this—before them. 

So yeah. Tony felt proud. He felt proud, and he felt kinda stupidly happy.

At least, he did feel those things-- right up until he watched Steve give Peter a kiss on the forehead and then got hit with the brutal realisation that it was only going to get worse from here. 

They were going to get prouder.

They were going to get happier. 

With every development Peter made when he was in their care, all of them were going to become more and more entrenched in his life. And then he was going to leave them, and it would all collapse. 

Just like that.  

Tony felt his expression stick on his face awkwardly as the thoughts occurred inside his brain, but it went unnoticed by the rest of the team, all too busy pampering Peter and lavishing him with their attention. They were living off borrowed time, and everyone in the tower knew it, but no one was trying to distance themselves from the inevitable downfall that Tony could see was coming. He had a bedtime routine and a favourite toy and, and God, Tony scheduled his meetings around Peter now, he hadn’t even really thought about it, he was just doing it because it was the obvious thing to do. Why wouldn’t he do that? Peter needed him. Tony, whether he liked it or not, had essentially become a stand-in fucking father to this child. So had Steve. And they’d not really spoken about it, they’d not made a point of it, but it was true. 

Jesus Christ, they’d accidentally started a family. And when this was all over, how were they… how were they going to cope when Peter was taken away?

This was ridiculous. And it was all well and good saying they should never have let it get this far, but the truth was, Tony had known all along about the consequences. He’d known and he’d tried to ignore it, deny it. They cared about Peter, sure, but not  _that_ much. Not like he was  _theirs_. 

He’d been lying to himself. It was clear as day in the way Steve was talking excitedly to Bruce about how Peter was going to be walking in no time at all now. Clear in the way that Tony’s first instinct upon seeing that damn child was to pick him up, hold him close, love him. Whether he wanted to or not, Tony knew that he would kill and die for the kid in front of him. He’d do anything, and that hadn’t even been a conscious choice he’d made. Christ, Tony didn’t even want to  _think_ about how much worse this was going to get the longer they spent around Peter. How much it was going to hurt when they had to move on. 

This should never have happened. But it had, and now their only option left was damage control. 

“Tony?” Steve’s voice drifted through his train of thought, the edge of excitement fading and turning into concern when he finally clocked the look on Tony’s face. “You okay?”

He blinked. “Yeah. Yeah, I just… tired. Think I’m gonna head up, actually.” He paused for a moment, before turning jerkily on his foot and wandering toward the elevator, his good mood having evaporated and left only bitterness in its wake. “Give Peter over to Thor. It’s his turn to take him for the night.”

He felt Steve’s eyes on him as he moved over to the elevator, but didn’t turn around. Suddenly, he just didn’t want to be there, around it all. He was tired, and it had been a long day, and Tony didn’t want to feel the underlying sense of heaviness that was now going to follow him whenever he saw Peter; a reminder that all of that happiness had a sell-by date. He wasn’t sure why it had hit him so hard just then of all times—maybe it was the fact that this was a milestone for Peter, and Tony and the whole team had deluded themselves into thinking they were a part of it. They weren’t. They were a stop-off point, the last resort. They were the better alternative to fucking AIM, and that was it. Trying to pretend that they could look after a child was just stupid. Especially for someone like Tony. He was supposed to be the pragmatic one, for fuck’s sake. 

And he knew, clear as day, that this would only end in heartbreak. 

Shutting his eyes as he stepped into the elevator, Tony sighed deeply and rested his hands against the railing. The chrome surface reflected his face perfectly, and when he drew his head up and took a look at himself, he was reminded of Monaco.  _Any more stupid ideas?_

Well, as far as stupid went, giving your heart away to a kid that wasn’t even yours sure was up there. 

The haze of unhappiness lingered around him as he dragged himself through his night-time routine, reminded of Peter’s presence at pretty much every turn. It was amazing how much stuff they’d managed to accumulate over such a short period of time, really. Toys and clothes and little shoes just sprayed liberally over what had used to just be Steve and Tony’s room. Everything had been ordered and neat and adult. This was a mess. 

With a scowl, Tony toed a baby shirt out of his path into the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth and took a shower. He heard Steve come in half-way through, but there was no tell-tale burbling or crying that implied Peter was with him. At least Steve had actually given him to Thor for the night. Because this was their time, and they were supposed to be having fun, not sulking in the shower.

“Get a grip,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head and then wiping the water out of his eyes as he stepped out from the spray and wrapped a towel around his midsection. He wasn’t going to bring this up with Steve right now. Tony knew it’d only upset him, and he didn’t want to fight. Anyway, it wasn’t even that important. Steve wasn’t an idiot; he was just as aware of all this as Tony was. But where Tony liked to err on the side of (admittedly pretty intense) caution when it came to emotional vulnerability, Steve tended to just throw himself in head-first and worry about the consequences when they hit him in the face later. And he was headed for a pretty damn big smack in the face at this rate. They all were. 

A knock on the door interrupted him from his thought, and Tony turned just as Steve poked his head around the corner. His brow creased a little when he took in Tony’s posture, braced against the sink and holding a comb in his hand but making no move to actually use it. “Are you okay?” He asked at once, stepping in slowly, “you left pretty hastily back there.”

Steve sat on the edge of the tub and looked at Tony in the reflection of their bathroom mirror, head cocked. Tony smiled at him, clearing his throat as he brought the comb up to his damp hair. “Yeah,” he said easily, “yeah, I was just… tired, that’s all. Wanted a shower. It was goddamn sweltering in that restaurant.”

Steve hummed, seemingly satisfied with the answer. He scuffed his foot back and forth along the bath-mat absently while Tony got himself sorted, occasionally sparing quick glances his way with a small smile on his face. Tony knew what he was thinking, and it made him roll his eyes fondly. “Really that desperate?” He asked. “I’m shaving, Steve, it’s hardly pornographic.”

With an embarrassed groan, Steve pushed himself off the bath and wandered forward, his hands wrapping around Tony’s waist. He rested his mouth against Tony’s bare shoulder, kissing him absently. “It’s been  _ages_ ,” he whined, pushing up close, “can you shave later?”

“I’ve started the routine, Steve, and you know not to mess with my routine.” Tony grinned and plucked his moisturiser from the counter, trying valiantly not to react when Steve moved his mouth to Tony’s neck, kissing just under his ear. “You can’t try and seduce me right now. I’m busy.”

“And I’m hard.”

“Aw, my heart goes out to you,” Tony reached behind him and patted Steve’s cheek, and then, because he was a bit of dick, he rolled his hips back into Steve, grinning even harder when Steve’s breath caught and his hands flexed against Tony’s hips. Poor super-soldier hormones made the man insatiable when he got turned on. And it was just so fun to tease him. “Go wait in bed. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Steve harrumphed sulkily, but stepped back—of course, not before he’d nipped his fingers under the towel around Tony’s waist and quickly tugged it off with a flourish. Tony just eyed him from the reflection of the mirror, but Steve didn’t notice. Too busy staring at other parts of Tony’s anatomy. “You’re an asshole.”

“And you’re hot.” Steve hung the towel back on the rack and then opened the door, “don’t be long.”

“Or what?”

Steve’s eyebrow went up. “I’ll drag it out,” he said easily, “and we both know how much you hate to wait.” With that, he slipped out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him, leaving Tony holding his razor and internally debating how much he  _really_ needed to sharpen up the edges of his goatee.

As it turned out, not that much was the answer. 

 

 _____

 

 

Later that night, after having managed to finally tire each other out, Tony lay with his cheek rested on Steve’s chest, fingers trailing lightly over the taut skin of his lover’s bicep. Steve was still conscious in some sense, but his eyes were shut and he was motionless, limbs loose and body pliant. 

It was late. Tony should probably have tried to get some sleep. But his thoughts still raced, despite Steve’s best efforts to fuck him senseless. Usually that would work. But tonight, unfortunately, there was too much on his mind.

He sighed quietly and pressed his forehead into Steve’s sternum for a second before slowly sitting up, disentangling their bodies and then sliding out of bed. He checked the clock: 1 in the morning. He could spend a few hours in the workshop doing some more research into AIM, or maybe try and get to work on setting out the groundwork for the new version of coding he wanted to work through the Iron Man armour. 

He padded through the room, hand going for the door. In the darkness, however, he ended up stubbing his toe on something strewn across the floor, and he bit back a curse when the pain spiked through his foot. He glanced down, and when he saw that it was one of Peter’s building blocks under his feet, that made him irrationally angrier. “For Christ’s sake,” he muttered, bending down and picking it up, along with a few of the other toys that were laid alongside it. He walked over to the corner and then stuffed them into the cupboard there, and seeing as he had started, he went around the room and picked everything else up too. They’d been so focused on Peter lately that they’d pretty much let everything else go to shit, and it couldn’t really carry on. They had other responsibilities. Global safety was a big one, but keeping the tower tidy was still important, and now he was thinking about it, this sort of stuff wasn’t just in their room. It was in the corridors, the halls, everywhere. Pepper was gonna blow a gasket when she came back from Vienna—

“Tony?”

He glanced behind him, watching Steve as he sat up in bed, the frown back on his face. “What are you doing?” He asked, voice full of sleepiness. 

Tony shrugged, putting the last armful of stuff into the cupboard. “Just housekeeping,” he said, “I keep stepping on all of this crap.”

Steve watched him for another second, then hummed. “We’re just gonna need to pull that all out again tomorrow,” he commented, “you know what Peter’s like about his toy selection.”

Tony’s mouth went tight, and he resisted the urge to sigh in frustration. Instead, he just turned back in the direction of the door again. “I was actually thinking that we should try enforcing that night-time rota again,” he said, fingers fiddling with the hem of his shirt, “I know we never really established it in the first place, but it would probably be better if Peter alternated between rooms, y’know.”

Steve was just a silhouette in the darkness of their room, but Tony still saw how he shifted, became a shade more tense. “Why?” He asked, “it’s… I mean, this is working pretty well as it is. And Peter won’t like the change.”

“We have no idea whether he’ll like it or not, we’ve never tried.”

“Yeah, because we don’t need to—”

“Steve?” Tony turned to him and raised a hand, shutting his eyes for a second. “Can we just try it? We have no reason not to. And it’ll take some of the responsibility off our shoulders. He’s not solely our concern. We all agreed to take him in until we can put him somewhere else, and it’s time everyone else started pulling their weight.”

“But he’s— he’s our…” Steve trailed off, fingers clenching around the sheets as he tried to find the words. But Tony already knew what he was going to say—some variation of  _‘he’s ours more than he’s theirs’._  

And that… That was the whole damn problem. 

Tony just sighed. “Let’s talk about it in the morning,” he said softly, “I want to go do some work before I sleep. I’ll be back in an hour or two, okay?”

Steve didn’t say anything for a moment, and Tony could sense his discomfort from across the room. But then he shrugged, trying to claim indifference. “Fine,” he said, just edging on snappily, “night.”

“Night,” Tony copied, biting back the urge to click his tongue irritably as he stepped out of the room. He shut the door with a soft snick and then made his way down to the workshop. That, at least, was free of any evidence that Peter was a part of his life. He refused to let the small, curious, serial-chewer into his expensive and highly dangerous workspace. It was just a recipe for disaster.

He sat on his desk-chair with a heavy thump and opened up all his research. He might as well get some of this shit done, after all. He’d been sidelining it a little recently, put-off by the lack of evidence available. But he just had to try harder. There was a guy operating on the Southeast coast who, according to Clint’s intel, liked to rent out his labs and science equipment to anyone who’d pay him enough, and seeing as the guy had been sipping Pina Coladas in the Bahamas for the past four months, Tony was going to assume someone had been funnelling the money for that particular expenditure into his account. 

He could start there, see what it dug up. 

And so that was what he did. He worked, and he kept himself busy, and by the time the morning light started to filter in through the windows he’d gotten…well, not very far, but it was still better than nothing. Steve would probably be pissed when he woke up and saw that Tony had never actually gone back to bed, but Tony just felt like he was in the wrong state of mind to be sleeping, and anyway, he was doing them all a favour. He was doing this for Peter. So that he could be safe, and he could go to a real home, where nothing blew up and no one turned huge and green and there weren’t weapons casually strewn around the fucking room. 

It was for the best.

Tony sighed, running a hand across his tired face. He needed a shower. And a caffeine hit. And a vacation. “JARVIS, is there anyone in the kitchen who we can harass into making me coffee?”

“Thor is available. Shall I issue a mild threat?”

Tony harrumphed, then turned to the clock with a frown. “Why is Thor even up at 5 in the morning?”

“It appears Master Parker has been having difficulties settling. They are both watching Looney Tunes in the living area, however he has acknowledged my suggestion about making coffee and a cup will be ready shortly.”

Tony nodded and pushed himself up out of his chair, feeling about three different joints crack as he did so. His neck was now uncomfortably sore, but he wasn’t going to inform Steve of that fact, because then he would have to admit that he should have gone to bed, and Tony was not willing to concede that. Even if it was true. 

The communal floor was dark when he wandered in; bathed in the gloomy shadow of night that was slowly fading to morning. It was raining heavily outside, as shown from the heavy clouds that hung above and the incessant pitter-patter of drops against glass. Perfect weather, if you asked Tony. He found the noise soothing. 

Thor, the magnificent man that he was, had indeed prepped the coffee machine for him, and Tony sighed with satisfaction when the cup touched his lips. Nothing better than three shots of espresso at four in the morning, and that was just a fact. While he sipped, he distantly heard the sounds of the TV behind him, and once he had gotten half-way through the cup, he turned to glance into the living room. 

He was not disappointed. Although obscured by the couch, Tony didn’t fail to miss the cone-shaped blanket that poked upward and told him there was a God of Thunder wrapped underneath, and he shook his head fondly as he wandered further in. Thor was hunched up on the couch, his pale blue blanket swaddled around his midsection and head and leaving a trail of sheets flowing around him. He stared vacantly at the large screen up ahead, which was showing the cartoon animals beating each other up in a way only very young children and, apparently, Thor, found amusing, and his mouth was hung open vacantly while his hand remained half-extended sideways, pulling Peter back by the shirt every time the boy started to crawl too close to the edge of the armrest. 

Tony watched this all in fascination for a few moments. He got the feeling it had been a long night for Thor. “Enjoying yourself?”

The man didn’t turn from the TV. “These creatures go through so much violence and pain, yet it is so, so funny. That duck was beaten repeatedly over the head with a spade mere minutes ago.” Thor pointed at one of the animations. Tony was pretty sure that one was called Donald. Or maybe Daffy. He couldn’t say he’d ever paid much attention to their names. “I have not slept all night, Tony. How are you even alive?”

Tony frowned for a moment, wondering whether that was a general question, but then he remembered that Peter had been in Thor’s room for the night, and so undoubtedly this strange trance-like state Thor was in now was a result of the trauma that one could only endure after dealing with a cranky baby for longer than three hours. 

He grinned. “I did warn you not to let him stay up too late.”

Thor turned to him, then. Tony noted that he was wearing boxers and nothing else. “I’ve been to Hel and heard quieter screams than his.”

Tony just patted his shoulder gently from over the couch, wincing when he looked at the screen for too long. How Thor could deal with watching something so bright in a room so dark and not go immediately blind was beyond him. 

He turned his head, instead sparing a look over to the little boy on the other side of the couch. He was staring out of the window with wide eyes and an open mouth, chubby little hands outstretched and occasionally making aborted grabbing motions. Tony realised he must be looking at the rain as it dropped down to the ground below.

“I think he finds it soothing,” Thor commented, looking between Peter and Tony, “it was the only thing that made him stop crying.”

Tony found his eyes trained on Peter, watching in fascination as the child curled his fingers again and again, trying to catch what wasn’t there. It was confusing to Peter, but not in a way that appeared to distress him. He was inspecting his own hand and then dropping it, looking at the window where the rain fell. Tony could almost  _see_ his mind working, see him learning, figuring out perspectives and spatial coordination and distances. It was… incredible, in a simplistic way. Tony almost felt awed. 

He blinked, and then turned away hurriedly before he could become too invested in observing Peter. His hands flexed, unused to seeing the little boy and not ending up with him in his arms. He tamped down the urge. “Maybe next time you’ll listen when we tell you that he needs to keep to his routine,” he told Thor, tugging at the blanket around the man’s head before starting to walk back over to the kitchen. “Want me to make you a coffee?”

Thor grunted in approval, shuffling up the couch and then picking Peter up before standing and following Tony. “I think he missed you,” Thor commented, and Tony felt himself stiffen. 

“Nah,” he waved a hand, trying for nonchalance. “Just cranky.”

“Not from what I heard.” 

Tony turned slowly to him, watching Thor grab a loaf of bread and then pull out a handful of slices, starting to chew on them absently. Tony briefly took a moment to process the fact that he was watching a Norse God who was wearing nothing except his underwear as he ate plain slices of bread and held a small superhuman baby in one meaty arm. It was certainly not a statement he’d ever thought he’d be making. “Thor, are you trying to tell me that you speak Baby now?”

Rather than scoff and admit he was joking, Thor just shrugged, which,  _what_ _the_ _fuck_. “They don’t know language, so I don’t really speak it, per se,” he began, and Tony was almost appeased until he added, “I can just sense the emotions behind what it is they’re trying to say. And he wanted the glowing man and the singing man, which I assume is you and Steve.”

Tony’s hands slipped on the coffee machine, and he hissed as the hot metal brushed his skin. “Well,” he began through a stutter, “well, that’s… that’s why we should probably keep him in other rooms more regularly, isn’t it?”

Then it was Thor’s turn to splutter. “He’s not staying with me again. I love him, but not that much.”

“What, and I love him more?” Tony said, knowing that the way the words came out were far more accusing than he’d intended them to be.

Thor blinked, somewhat taken aback. “Well… yeah,” he said with a shrug, “you and Steve are, y’know…”

Yeah. Tony knew. He clenched his jaw and slammed the coffee cup down a little too sharply. The noise resonated. “Yeah, we’re the parents, we’re the ‘mom and dad’, we’re the fucking big happy family now, aren’t we?” He muttered viciously, pouring out a healthy dose of coffee into the mug and then pulling open the fridge with a sharp tug. “Well we’re gonna need to cut that shit out. Peter can’t get overly attached to us, and we shouldn’t be getting overly attached to him either. And we’re not his fucking parents anyway. We all said—we said we’d look after him together—”

“Tony—”

“—No, that’s what we  _said_ , we  _agreed_ , and then suddenly everyone else backs down and leaves me and Steve to do everything, to have him every night, and you’ve seen how goddamn difficult he can be, but for some reason we’re doing it all the time, which—which is totally unfair because as you can tell, he’s a fucking nightmare, and it’s dumb anyway, because he can’t… he  _shouldn’t_ be making all these connections.” Tony waved a hand jerkily, wondering why the hell he was getting so upset about this, but unwilling to stop himself either. He needed to get it out. It needed to be said.

Thor seemed to be wondering the same thing, because he moved tentatively closer, placing a heavy hand on Tony’s shoulder. “You should have said something,” he said softly, “if we’d known you were struggling, we would have taken up more responsibility. I’m sorry. I was only joking just then; I don’t mind having him a few nights of the week. And I’m sure everyone else will be more than willing to look after him more as well.”

Tony shut his eyes. He didn’t know how to tell Thor that he  _hadn’t_ been struggling, not at all, and that was the issue here. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Peter was leaning sideways in Thor’s arms, trying to grab Tony’s shirtsleeves. Thor shifted him away carefully, but Peter was not impressed by that and started to whimper, arms extended, asking for Tony. Because that was who wanted to hold him. 

Tony was fighting a losing battle. He couldn’t undo what he’d done here, and he couldn’t go back either. Peter was going to leave, and whatever Tony tried to do now, it was still going to hurt like hell. 

“Hey, hey, don’t cry,” Thor shushed Peter as he started to get more upset, something pleading in his voice, “please, I thought we were over this. I thought we agreed that crying was no fun. Come on, hey, shall we look at the rain again?” Thor stepped back, but Peter’s wails grew louder at that, and Thor looked at Tony pleadingly, expecting Tony to take him and help him be quiet.

Tony couldn’t do it. He just wanted this all to be over now. He wanted to have never got himself into this stupid situation in the first place.

“Call Steve,” he muttered, sliding the coffee over to Thor and then backing away, “he’ll probably be getting up for his run about now-ish anyway. He might help calm Peter down.”

Without looking at the boy crying in Thor’s arms, Tony swallowed down the guilt and turned to walk away.

 

_____ 

 

Of course, after that little outburst in the kitchen, Tony knew it wasn’t long before someone- most likely Steve- called him out and asked him about it. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t drag it out a little bit, and what better way than to scurry right back to his workshop and find more things to work on? It wasn’t like he was short of them, what with being a CEO and a superhero and all. 

So he buried himself up to the waist in Iron Man guts. It was about time he did a rehaul. The wiring sucked. Wiring could always be improved. It was simple. If there was a fault, it could be fixed. If something was slow, it could be sped up. He lost himself to the logic of it, finding comfort with the numbers in the same way he had his whole life. This was what he understood, and it wasn’t going to change, and it wasn’t going to leave. It was just numbers. 

The work managed to save him about three hours. That was actually good, all things considered. Steve must have been busy. But he still ended up knocking on the door of Tony’s workshop about 192 minutes later- not that Tony had been purposely counting. It was just that once he started on the numbers, it was hard to stop, and he ended up doing it for sort of… everything.

Tony looked up and saw him stood outside the glass doors, pulling the very specific face he did whenever Tony was behaving in a way that Steve couldn’t figure out but was mildly concerned about. The fact that he hadn’t just walked right through the door was an indicator that Steve was going to have some sort of serious conversation. He was establishing that Tony didn’t have to let him inside if he didn’t want to. Because he was just a good fucking guy like that. 

God, he made it so difficult to be sulky. 

With a gruff nod, Tony waved him in and signalled to JARVIS to turn the music down, keeping his eyes on the circuit board balanced in his lap. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He began, quirking an eyebrow and picking up a screwdriver. 

He felt Steve approach slowly and then take a seat on Tony’s desk chair, fingers brushing over the files strewn there. The silence was unnerving, and Tony knew Steve wasn't doing it on purpose, he was only trying to think of something to say, but it set Tony's nerves on end anyway.

“We discovered Peter’s got a different enhancement,” Steve told him eventually, and that made Tony look up at him in surprise. He had to say, that hadn’t been how he’d expected this conversation to begin.

“Really?”

In response, Steve showed Tony his forearm. It looked pretty normal, however, and so Tony glanced back at Steve. “Why are you showing me your arm?” 

“I’m bruised.”

“Yeah? Much as I hate to say it, you’re bruised pretty often, darling,” Tony responded, looking at the little spots of blue that littered his arm more closely. Then, of course, the penny dropped and his eyes widened. “Wait a second,” he looked back to Steve, “did Peter do this?”

Steve nodded. “Yup.”

“And considering the fact that you’re pretty difficult to bruise…”

“I’m gonna guess that that’s an above-average strength for a baby,” Steve finished, before waving vaguely upward, “Bruce checked with JARVIS about the velocity and force and stuff. Definitely not normal for children his age.”

Tony hummed. So that was adhesive abilities and now superstrength too. He wondered what else the kid was hiding up his sleeve. “Why was he hitting you in the first place? Thought Thor might have calmed him down by now.”

“Well, you thought wrong.” Steve leaned forward, elbows digging into his knees as he looked down at Tony, still sat stubbornly on the floor and inspecting some soldering. “He’s not been calm since about 5 this morning, apparently. Thor says he missed us. Which brings me to my next question: why did Thor have to call  _me_ down to try and settle him, when he said that  _you’d_ been in the kitchen right when Peter had started getting antsy?”

“Steve—”

“And why was he telling me that you’d been acting strangely as soon as the topic of Peter got brought up, even going so far as to say that he was a nightmare, and generally giving off the impression that you no longer wanted anything to do with him?” Steve’s face had hardened at that, which was great, because now the expression had turned into his ‘you’ve crossed the line Tony’ look, which was fucking stupid anyway, Tony hadn’t done anything wrong. 

“What’s going on?” Steve asked, trying to soften himself when he saw how Tony was tensing up in front of him. “You’ve been acting strange since last night. One minute you were fine and the next—”

“I’d opened my eyes and realised how fucking  _stupid_ this whole thing was,” Tony snapped, throwing the screwdriver down with a frustrated clatter and spinning to pin a glare on Steve. “The fact you’re here, chewing me out for not wanting to deal with Peter, is proof of the problem in itself. I’m not his dad. You’re not his dad. I can say he’s a fucking nightmare if I want, because I’m not obligated in any way to be nice to him.”

Steve glared at him. “That’s ridiculous. Of course we’re obligated, he’s our—”

“Our what, Steve?”

“Our… our responsibility!” Steve spluttered and threw his hands in the air. “And you love him, so this… this is—”

“I don’t fucking love him,” Tony growled, getting to his feet and turning to the Iron Man armour that was half-assembled at his side so he didn’t have to look at Steve’s expression. “I’m just—”

“Don’t you dare try and lie about this,” Steve said, now sounding properly angry, and Tony heard him stand up behind him as well, “you dote on that boy and you fucking know it, so don’t just try and lie through your teeth and expect me to believe it.”

Tony wanted to fucking scream. But he didn’t. He was better than that. Instead, he just leaned his closed fist up against the chest of the armour—which wasn’t a good idea when he remembered that DUM-E had just been melding some of the pieces earlier, and it was still pretty goddamn hot. “FUCK,  _ow_ , son of bitch!”

Brilliant. Way to make yourself look mature, Stark. 

“Hey, shit, are you okay?” Seemingly forgetting their argument all of a sudden, Steve jumped immediately into action, hurrying over with concern on his face as he looked at Tony’s hand gently and picked it up between his own. Tony winced, but just waved it off. 

“I’m  _fine_ ,” he bit out, “I’m fucking fine, I just… stupid burn, wasn’t thinking,  _goddamn it—”_

“Tony.” A pressure settled on each of his shoulders as Steve grasped him and tugged him a little closer in. The anger had morphed, turned into concern. Steve was worried. “What’s going on, huh? Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Tony kept his glare for a moment, staring at Steve, the last attempt to fight off an emotional conversation he didn’t want to have. Steve, of course, didn’t waver. He never had, and Tony didn’t think he ever would. Not when it came to things like this. 

Tony’s lip curled, and he looked away with a huff. “Peter’s saying our names,” he declared, soft, too soft, he needed to sound  _irritated_ by this, inconvenienced, not  _upset_ — “he’s learning. He misses us when we’re not there, Steve.  _Us_. Not anyone else on the team. Us.”

Steve looked bewildered, but he kept his cool. “How is that a—”

“Because it’s not real!” Tony’s hands rose and curled around Steve’s wrist, holding tight, begging him to understand. “This… this is a sham, Steve. He’s not ours to keep, and he is going to leave. Do you understand that? He’s going to fucking go, and I can’t… God, Steve, we’re still acting like some sort of fucking family.”

“Is that…” Steve swallowed and dipped his head closer, brushing up against Tony’s nervously, “is that such a bad thing?”

He felt like someone was punching him. Tony shut his eyes. “It is when we have to watch it all get taken away from us,” he responded gently, with a shake of his head. “If we—if we love him this much already, and we’re getting so carried away after such a relatively short amount of time… God, Steve, this is going to kill us if we lose ourselves any further in this. We have to start setting some boundaries. Now. We have to distance ourselves.”

Steve didn’t say anything for a few moments. Tony watched his throat work, watched his mouth purse as he thought it over. Steve was not a stupid man, far from it. He knew Tony’s point held value. 

“Something doesn’t have to be permanent to be good,” Steve responded eventually, and Tony opened his mouth, but Steve pressed a finger against his lips before he could try and argue. “Please let me talk, Tony. If we lived our lives thinking about how bad it was going to feel when the nice things stopped, or when the good times ended, we’d never be happy at all. Can’t you just… just let yourself have this? For once?”

God, Tony wished he could. It wasn’t like he  _wanted_ to make himself miserable. But Steve had always loved to be optimistic. He loved to live in the present, act now, suffer later. He took life as it came to him. But Tony just wasn’t like that. He was a futurist. A realist. Living the way Steve lived was never something he was going to be able to do. 

“This is for the best,” Tony said throatily, nodding his head once. Steve stilled, and then leaned away with the smallest of sighs, teeth tugging on his bottom lip as he watched Tony. “You should set some boundaries too, Steve. It’s the sensible thing to do.”

He folded his arms as he watched Steve turn away from him, moving to the desk where he pulled open the drawer full of medical supplies. From there, he took an ice-pack, breaking the beads within to activate it before walking over to Tony and wrapping it gently around his stinging hand. He was calm, collected, He didn’t look at Tony with anything other than mild concern and a level of understanding that tended to terrify Tony if he thought about it too hard.

“Peter had never experienced what it felt like to be loved before us,” Steve told him eventually, voice shaking just a touch, “you watched those videos right along with me. You saw what he went through. He had never had someone hold him, or sing to him, or smile at him. He went through the first critical stages of his life entirely uncared for.”

Steve’s thumb smoothed across Tony’s wrist. There was nothing accusatory there. But Tony… Well, Tony had never thought of it that way, and suddenly he felt like scum. Unaware of this, Steve continued. “He’s only just found some sense of stability, and kindness, and family. Do we really want to take that from him?”

Tony, look. I understand your need for self preservation. I do. But that kid has literally spent his whole life being tortured. So yes- I’m going to hug him when he wants me to hug him, and I’m going to love him as much as I can. His past is his past, and his future will be his future, but right here right now, I am going to give him everything I can. And you’re right. It’s going to suck later. But at least Peter will have learned what it feels like to be cared for, and I won't have to live with the idea that I was just another of his handlers, rather than someone who actually gave a damn.” 

Oh.

Steve’s smile was soft, worn, a little sad, and he pressed a gentle kiss to Tony’s forehead before slipping away, heading off in the direction of the doors once more. “Think about it, okay?” He called out behind him, and then with one last glance in Tony’s direction, he wandered out of the workshop. Tony watched him jog up the stairs and disappear from sight.

Tony slumped. He hadn’t... God, he’d been so caught up worrying over himself that he hadn’t even stopped to think about that. Goddamn it, Steve.

“Fuck,” he muttered as he turned back to his desk, throwing the icepack to the side carelessly now that Steve wasn’t around to tell him off for it. “ _Fuck_.”

Steve was right. Screw him, but he was right. He dropped clumsily onto the chair and then leaned forward onto his desk, looking straight ahead and trying not to hit something. This complicated things. The plan that he’d started developing in his head since last night had suddenly been shattered, and now he was having to re-evaluate everything.  _Again_. 

He loved Peter. This was going to ruin him when it was over. He couldn’t step back, because Peter needed him, and whether Tony was family or not, he still owed it to Peter to be there for him. God only knows no one else ever had been before he’d been dropped off at the tower. And maybe they were all volatile, maybe they were too loud and too childish and too emotionally stunted to be around a kid. But even with all that baggage, they were still the only people on the planet that that little boy felt safe around. 

Tony sighed. He wished he felt more irritated about it all, but in reality, he didn’t. He was aware enough of his own bullshit to realise that his anger was just misplaced sadness, and his reticence now was pretty fucking translucent, too. He felt glad. He was glad that he had an excuse to keep Peter in their room at night, to be the one that Peter reached for, to celebrate any other milestones they were lucky enough to witness. He wanted that. And never in a million years had Tony ever thought he’d even consider that; not even a month ago, all this had felt like nothing more than a temporary scenario. A funny little game of make-believe, where they’d all played happy family and Tony had pretended Peter’s last name was ‘Rogers-Stark’ whilst in reality Steve had hidden in the corner every time Peter had gone near him. 

But it had all moved on so quickly. Steve had worked everything out eventually and ended up genuinely doting on the boy, and Tony had too, and it’d all started to feel so terrifyingly  _real_ that the idea of permanence, the concept of maybe actually doing this with Steve, together, was… it was there. It was attainable. 

And God, Tony wanted Peter to be part of that reality. That was the worst part. He couldn’t see this amorphous ‘Steve & Tony Start A Family’ bullshit without Peter being there too. It was all so tragically pathetic of him. And now his plan to back out and try to cut ties had fallen through thanks to Steve’s irritatingly sound logic, and so Tony couldn’t even take measures to prevent the inevitable fallout. He was just going to have to watch the deadline come steadily closer and resign himself to his fate. 

“This is going to end terribly,” Tony declared, waving a sad little finger around, “JARVIS, make note. This is going to end very, very terribly.”

“It has been logged, Sir.”

Tony grunted, flexing his hand and wincing. He should have kept the ice-pack on. He really hated when Steve was right about things. 

With a final muttered, “fuck me,” Tony sat up and pulled his phone from his back pocket, calling Pepper up in order to ask her to send him the latest schematics from R&D that he’d been sidelining for the past few weeks. He needed some time to sort his damn head out, re-align himself. And it’d make Pepper happy, at the very least. 

So he dove back into his work with renowned vigour, letting the math and the science and the engineering take over once more; a welcome change to the mess within his head. He disassembled the prototype StarkPhone that was currently in the works and then reassembled it better, faster, and definitely prettier than before. Not that the latter had been difficult. He was going to be having words with the design team about aesthetics later. 

By the time he had the improved model ready to send back to R&D, afternoon had come and gone and his mind was less frantic, having spent so long streamlining it into one project. This was why he loved his job. It was so easy to become a part of the process; another cog in the mechanism that made the whole world turn. He always took a moment, before sending something out or showing it to the masses, to be grateful for the fact that he was able to do this. Flipping the phone over in his hands a few times, Tony eventually glanced upward. “Tell Pep it’s ready for stage three finalisation,” he declared to JARVIS, his ever-omniscient listener. “Then ask her to take a picture of her happy and unendingly grateful face for me, so I can feel extra validated.”

“Of course, Sir.” JARVIS sounded mildly amused. “May I suggest now that you make your way up to the nearest source of food? You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Haven’t I?” Tony checked his watch in surprise, and then gave a small nod. “You know, I  _am_ kinda hungry.”

“Indeed, who would have seen that outcome?”

Tony grinned as he stood, cracking the vertebrae in his spine as he started to walk over to the stairwell. “Honestly, who’s teaching you to be so rude these days? I bet it’s Nat. She’s good at finding unique ways to irritate me.”

“Of course. There is no one else in this house who could possibly have taught me the conversational values of sarcasm,” JARVIS said, of course, sarcastically. Tony laughed. Definitely his creation, that was for sure.

He smiled at the ceiling as he slipped from the doors, knowing that JARVIS’ cameras would pick it up. “Get one of the good-for-nothings upstairs to put a hot-pocket on for me, will you?”

He spent the rest of the journey up to the communal floor arguing with JARVIS over the nutritional values of said hot-pockets, eventually appeasing the AI when he begrudgingly agreed to eat a piece of real fruit alongside his late-afternoon snack. Tony admitted that the guy might have a point. Tomorrow was training exercise day, which meant he should probably carb-load or something, in order to make sure he didn’t suffer cardiac arrest when Steve decided to make him run a marathon in the armour or whatever it was that sadist had planned.

He found their floor abuzz with its usual afternoon activity when he eventually joined them; with Clint and Nat both lying over the kitchen counters, clad in their SHIELD uniforms after just arriving back from the New York base where they’d spent the day. They were discussing what appeared to be some sort of office gossip about the reliability of Jeanette’s sources, and whether Ricky had actually slept with her or whether she just wanted her five minutes of fame on floor 4. From what Tony could hear, Clint seemed to be a believer, but Nat was sceptical about the whole thing. Near to Nat’s head, Bruce was making two sets of tea and heaping about seven sugars into the second cup, so Tony was going to assume that Thor was on the way at some point in order to drink the God-awful thing. It wasn’t as if anyone else in the room would ever allow that to go near their mouth. 

And, of course, there was Steve and Peter, right in the middle of it all as they sat at the table. Steve was waving a fork somewhat desperately in the direction of Peter’s mouth while the child firmly refused to let it past his lips, instead banging his sippy cup loudly against the tray of his high-chair and darting his head backward to escape the mouthful of mushy food. Tony watched the interaction for a few seconds, that familiar fuzzy warmth settling like a warm blanket over his chest as Steve ran a hand across his forehead and looked down firmly at the little boy. “Peter,” he said, “open your mouth. It’s yummy, I promise. Here, look!” After a brief second of pausing in which to cast a wary glance at the fork, Steve turned it around and then put it in his mouth, smiling painfully. “Mmmm,” he declared with fake enthusiasm, “that’s nice. Nice healthy mushy food!”

“In another life, you should have been an actor,” Clint commented idly, not looking away from the phone that was hovering an inch from his face while he lay on the counter. Steve scowled at him before turning back to Peter with an exhausted sigh, and Tony chose that moment to make himself heard, clearing his throat softly and then moving behind Steve. His hand slid over the man’s shoulder and Steve glanced up at him, his face softening immediately.

“Enjoying the mush?” Tony asked with a raised eyebrow.

Steve looked back at Peter, scooping up another dollop of what Tony could only describe as weird orange-coloured slime. “It tastes like dead people’s toes,” Steve informed him.

Tony’s lip curled. “Wow. No wonder Peter’s rejecting it,” he said, before adding, “but if you keep watch over my hot pocket so it doesn’t burn or get eaten by stray Avengers, I’ll take over dinner-time for you.”

Steve paused, turning to look at him for a few moments. He didn’t say anything, and neither did Tony. They both knew what the other was thinking, after all. Then, slowly, Steve’s hand came up and reached for Tony’s, and he smiled softly. “Thank you,” was all he said before he slid from the chair and allowed Tony to take his place. He dropped down and pressed a kiss to the top of Tony’s head and then ambled off in the direction of the microwave. Tony was left looking at Peter and his horrendously messy face as the boy stared up at him. His fingers were covered in orange-brown mush.

Tony pulled a face, pushing down about seven different instincts in order to lean forward and wipe at Peter’s mouth. “Disgusting creature,” he informed the baby, shaking his head and sighing. “I should have stuck to my guns and not let Steve win. Would have saved me a lot of pain.” 

Peter burbled, a sticky hand reaching, as usual, for the light in Tony’s chest. When he couldn't reach, his brow folded and his little podgy fist clenched, flying around in Tony's vicinity, trying to get a hold on any part of him that he could reach. He always wanted to touch, did Peter. Like he'd said; he loved attention, and even though Tony was still apprehensive, it was damn-near impossible to deny the boy that when he was looking at Tony so Goddamn earnestly. It was like he'd taken that puppy-dog gaze straight out of Steve's 'how to wrap a Tony around your little finger' handbook.  Downright embarrassing how fast Tony caved to that, these days.

He huffed and shuffled closer, picking up the fork and trying not to think about the future, just for once. Just for Peter. “Right little man. Shall we try again?”

 

_____ 

 

Later that night, long after Peter had drifted off to sleep and the rest of the team had parted ways to their own quarters, Steve and Tony lay together in bed, curled into one another and talking idly as they waited for the lethargy to take hold. This was secretly the favourite part of Tony’s day. That bit, right at the end, when it was just them. When they whispered overly truthful things to one another in the almost-asleep haze of night, fingers running feather-soft over the familiar divots and muscles. When Steve’s voice started to croak with over-use, and all that Tony could see of him was the fuzzy silhouette, the occasional glisten as the last few particles of light hit those blue eyes of his. It was like nothing else in the world, in the universe, even existed in those moments. This was just him and Steve, his whole existence narrowed down to the face two inches away from his.

Steve was talking about a lady called Miss Holloway, who’d sold pretzels to him during his first few weeks back out of the ice. Tony wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here, but he listened anyway, thumb brushing back and forth across Steve’s bicep as the other man spoke. 

“-And she was the only person back then who seemed to ask me about how my day was and really mean it,” he continued, eyelashes fluttering as he blinked. Tony hummed to show he was still actively listening, and Steve continued. “Anyway. After the Battle of New York, I didn’t see her again. Her stand was right underneath the tower, pretty much. I’m not… I don’t know whether she was among the dead. I didn’t see her name on the list, but…”

“A lot of them didn’t get recorded,” Tony finished quietly, mouth thinning as he thought about the death-count that day, and the amount of people who had been hit not by a conventional bullet, but by beams that had disintegrated their tissue, their bone, their everything. Not many of the Chitauri had carried those weapons. But the ones that had had clearly been the superiors of the army, and they’d known how to use them to the deadliest effect. “I’m sorry, baby. She sounded lovely.”

Steve was silent for a while, to the point where Tony wondered if he’d fallen asleep. But then he shifted in the bed, moved a little closer, until his chin was resting lightly on Tony’s head. He sighed. “I sometimes think… You know, that if we…” he broke off, a frustrated little noise blowing from his lips as he struggled to find the words in his half-asleep state. He shifted again, subconsciously moving near to the source of warmth. “Good things come and go so fast in our lives. And we- we just let them. We just… they go, and that’s that. It’s done. We have to move on.” He tucked his chin in, nose brushing against Tony’s forehead. Tony felt his brow crease, trying to catch hold of the words and they drifted through his mind. “But what if we didn’t?”

“Didn’t what?” Tony asked.

Steve was silent for a second, before he cleared his throat and answered. “What if we didn’t let them go.”

The penny dropped. Tony’s eyes shifted, dragged themselves over to the corner of the room where he knew Peter’s crib lay, and where he knew Steve’s thoughts had settled. Were he anywhere else, at any other point of the day, the statement might have thrown him. Too many variables to consider, too many doubts and fears to cloud his vision. 

But here, all there was was Steve, his nose brushing Tony’s, his hand splayed across Tony’s back, looking down at him with a bitten lip and a vulnerable expression on his achingly perfect face. 

“Would you really want that?” Tony murmured.

He at least expected a pause. But Steve’s answer was immediate. “Yes.”

Which was amazing, really, considering how difficult it had been for Steve at the start. Tony had begun this believing that a family was the last thing Steve wanted. But he was proved wrong. Steve wanted it so, so badly. Tony could see it in the way he treated Peter. How he held the boy like he meant more than anything else in the whole world, the baby’s whole body tucked safely in one massive arm, and how he smiled so brightly whenever Peter laughed, or reached for him, or tried to say his name through a toothless mouth that couldn’t make the ‘T’. 

And it wasn’t just Steve. Every time Tony saw the two of them together, something in him just felt  _right_. And it wasn’t like the final piece of them had finally fitted into place- Tony would still feel totally, utterly complete if it was just him and Steve together for the rest of their lives. But… But maybe it was just like the cherry on top. The egg-sheen on a pastry that made the whole thing shine.

He knew it wasn’t that simple, really. Somewhere deep down, beyond the happy post-sex, half-asleep contentment he was floating in, he knew that parenthood was more than just looking after a baby for a few months. It was the challenge of shaping a whole human into someone wonderful and kind and healthy, keeping them safe, being good for them. Tony wouldn’t be good for them. Steve would. Not Tony. And anyway, it was unrealistic. Not part of the plan that they’d agreed upon from the start: keep Peter here, look after him until he was safe enough to be put into the care of someone else. That was the logical course of action that they’d established right from the beginning. Deviating from that would be— it would be… 

Well. Everything Tony ever seemed to want these days.

And although what he wanted didn’t really matter, and logic and reason needed to be kept in mind, Tony still didn’t consider speaking that out into the darkness. Here, he didn’t even need to think about any of that. He just needed to say what he felt, truly, in his soul. 

So he smiled, and he shut his eyes, and he said, “Me too.”

 

_____ 

 

“I swear, Cap, if you make me run through this exercise again I’m gonna fucking lose it.” Natasha pointed a threatening finger toward Steve on the other side of the large room, red hair falling in damp strands as she caught her breath. Tony had to agree with her sentiment. People might have thought that the armour helped him conserve his own strength, but the metal got goddamn  _heavy_ after a while.

Underneath his cowl, Steve just grinned. “Widow, your victim is dying over there.” He thrust a hand to the other side of the hall, where Clint was lying face-down on one of the mock-up buildings.

“Good,” Natasha muttered, cracking her neck, “he took the last slice of toast this morning.”

“He’s not Clint. He’s an unarmed civilian, and he’s dying.”

“In two seconds, you’re not gonna be far behind him, Cap.” Natasha stuck her finger up at him, but after a second of Steve staring her down, she sullenly got into position. “Thor?”

In the rafters, Thor raised his thumb. “On your word!”

Tony launched a few feet in the air, watching as Steve started the simulation again. The task was not just to be able to run through the specific moves and routines, but also to be able to do it while under pressure or facing multiple foes. Tony had created this whole compound for that purpose alone. Rooms equipped with everything they could possibly need, including the massive hall in which they were currently working and a realistic computer simulation that gave them the pressure aspect.

As Steve flicked the switch, holographic foes flickered to life, their routines and fight-styles scrambled from the thousands of options Tony had randomized. Natasha crouched, immediately taking out her blade and slicing through the first one that approached. “Okay, GO!”

They worked tirelessly and seamlessly, having drilled this three other times previously. And although Tony loved to complain about the way Steve worked them, he and the rest of the team all understood their value and knew that they really did improve their performance out on the field. Unfortunately, Steve also knew they understood, and so never let them have a single inch of leeway either. And after an hour of ruthless training regimes, it left them a little bit weary, to say the least.

However, they performed the routine with brutal efficiency and, in Tony’s opinion, some quite spectacular panache. Although that may have just been him experimenting with some flips along the way, and a bit of showy lightning from Thor. The rest of the team just boringly got on with it, and no matter how many times he asked Steve to rip his uniform off in masculine triumph at the end of a successful exercise, the man never did. A shame, really.

He landed back on the ground with a thud, pulling back the faceplate in order to wipe his brow. Around him, his mock-up city was in tatters, but their civilian death-count was at zero, and the fake bomb had been successfully disposed of with minimal damage. Steve patted him firmly on the back as he passed. “This was great, guys,” he said warmly, nodding at everyone as they reconvened, “anyone got anything to say about it?”

“I think something in my bow is catching as it fires,” Clint said, lifting his bow up and stroking it soothingly, “I can compensate for it, but I might need it looking over before I go into any more missions.”

Tony wordlessly extended a hand, and Clint passed it over. He’d check it over later. A few more comments were made, but ultimately they’d done pretty good, and there wasn’t anything else that needed working on. Steve breathed out, running a hand through his hair as he glanced at Tony. “Anyone fancy working through the second rout—”

“Don’t you dare,” Tony clamped a hand over his mouth firmly, “You might all be young and agile, but I’m on the wrong side of forty and have a nice lavender-scented bubble bath just waiting for me at home. No chance.”

“Hey, your age isn’t the issue here,” Steve grinned and nodded over to Clint, who was trying to nap on Thor’s shoulder, “he’s supposed to be in the prime of his life right now, and look at him.”

“Well he eats Cheetos for breakfast lunch and dinner, Steve. He doesn’t count.”

The man frowned, and Tony could see him making a mental note to start nagging Clint about adding more vegetables and nutritional things to his diet. They all started to drift off in the direction of the changing rooms, Tony pulling off bits of the armour as he went. He had a special mode for training, but the suit weight stayed the same, and his bones were filled with the familiar ache that came post-mission. He really was looking forward to the lavender bath. Possibly with a supersoldier thrown in there for good measure.

His mind started to wander onto rapidly dirtier trains of thought, but before he could even open his mouth to broach said thoughts to Steve, JARVIS automatically extended the helmet back over his head, lighting up the HUD as he did so. Of course, at the first motion of JARVIS making a move, Tony realised that there was some sort of emergency, and stopped dead in his tracks as a red warning flashed over his vision. He read quickly. “Guys. We’ve got a situation.”

Ahead of him, everyone stopped dead. Clint’s shoulders dropped. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me—”

“Nope. I’m getting reports of shots fired outside the SHIELD facility in New York…” He squinted at the CCTV footage JARVIS had obtained for him. “It looks like there’s a group trying to storm the building. We got reinforced trucks, upwards of fifty people so far, they’re—” Tony’s eyes widened as he watched the individuals lift their weapons, firing at anything that moved as they ascended the steps. “Fuck, they’re firing at civilians. We gotta move.”

“Avengers,” Steve said, back straightening, his smile gone and replaced with hard leadership, “looks like the next training routine’s gonna have to wait, we got the real thing up ahead. Thor, take Clint and Nat.” The God nodded and sidled up to the two spies as they all ran for the lockers where their real weapons were stored. “I’ll arrive front and centre with Iron Man, you take the back and meet them in the middle. Someone call Bruce—” He paused, suddenly wary as he looked at Tony for a second. “Who’s gonna look after Peter?”

They all stopped. Bruce was currently on baby-duty. What with his Hulking tendencies, he didn’t particularly offer much assistance in training exercises. But if they needed him now…

“I don’t think this is a Hulk situation,” Thor said, “we can deal with this alone.”

“I’ll tell Happy to remain on standby,” Tony added, “he’ll drive up to the tower and take Peter from Bruce if he needs to suit up and join us.”

They all nodded, satisfied with the arrangement. Tony informed JARVIS to switch from training protocols to normal fight-mode, and he saw Natasha swiftly shove a new mag into her gun. He looked to Steve, already suited and booted. “Ready?” He asked.

Steve nodded and stepped in, hand snaking around his waist. “Duck your head,” Tony informed him quickly, before firing up the repulsors and smashing through the roof. He’d fix it alongside all the other damage done during training. 

They flew through the skies at a rapid speed, Tony listening in on the constant stream of information as JARVIS relayed it through. They’d successfully cut off the whole street, and so any civilians caught in the middle were holed up in their own buildings. Tony just hoped to god they’d stay there for the time being. SHIELD had already gone into lockdown mode, but the trucks that had rolled up were storing a range of nifty gizmos, and from what Tony could tell, they were somehow managing to interfere with the counter-defence measures SHIELD had for these situations. Tony was going to have to take a look at them later, too. See where they’d gone wrong.

Another blow hit a few minutes later as new reports started to surface. Tony still had the CCTV footage in the corner of the HUD, plus the various messages that he was receiving through the SHIELD secure line, and he took it all in with a sinking heart. “Steve, it looks like our enemies are sporting a variety of mid-level enhancements.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for starters, one of them just melted straight through the reinforced doors.” Tony put more thrust into the repulsors. “We need to keep the ones remaining outside focused on SHIELD and not the surrounding buildings. Those civilians are sitting ducks in there.”

Steve nodded, tapping his comm. “Thor? I need you on the outside, keeping them away from civvy buildings.” Tony heard Thor’s confirmation through his own comm as he approached the large metal skeleton of the SHIELD compound. He quickly switched back to Steve’s comm. “We need to find out what they want.”

“They’ve hit a non-combatant SHIELD facility, so it’s not weapons. Next guess is information. Or tech.”

“Anything worth taking will be stored in the underground levels.”

“So that’s where we go.” Steve smiled his battle-smile, bracing as they landed right on the steps of the facility, Tony shielding Steve from the gunfire on the street as it immediately rained upon them. Steve pulled up his shield and nodded. “Let’s go kick some ass.”

They stormed into the building, Tony hearing Thor confirm his landing not even seconds later. Nat and Clint would be on the other side of the facility, and Tony quickly informed them of the situation. His arms ached fiercely as he lifted his repulsors to fire at the first non-SHIELD uniform he caught sight of, but he didn’t let it slow him. He couldn’t. He was in fight-mode, now. 

He and Cap made their way through the front entrance, following the trail of destruction that the attackers had left. There were SHIELD agents lying lifeless on the floor, and he saw Steve’s eyes catch on them as they moved past. Like Tony had said; this facility wasn’t for combat. It was mostly science and research, and the minimal trained fighters they had hadn’t been able to stand up against the enhanced enemy. Anyone else still in the building would either be valiantly trying to hold back the wave of attackers, or hiding out. 

He watched Cap raise his finger to his comm. “Hawkeye, Widow, you seeing anything?”

“We got incoming, Cap.” That was Hawkeye, and he sounded grim, “They’re about a minute from the research floor and storage facilities that we’ve arrived at with the rest of the SHIELD agents. Widow and I are setting up a blockade to try and slow ‘em down when they arrive at the basement levels, but these guys aren’t trained properly for this. They’ve only been through Basic. We’re gonna need you here, quick.”

“I’ve got agents saying that one of them is impervious to bullets,” Widow added, “another is pyrokinetic, two are mild speedsters, and they’re saying there’s even a guy that’s part-robot.”

Tony bristled. That was  _his_ thing. “Are they the only ones?”

“Not sure. They’re the only ones we’ve heard about, but there’s still a good fifty more heavily-armed enemies running around here. Thor’s saying he can hardly keep track of all of them outside.”

“Anyone know who they work for?” Tony asked.

“Apparently the enhanced guys are wearing a different uniform to the others. We’re thinking they’re the hired help. But the rest of them… people are pretty sure it's AIM.”

Tony and Steve looked over at each other. The tension seemed to turn up a few notches higher. By this point, they were both very familiar with AIM’s work.

“Widow, Hawkeye, let them through to the basement,” Steve said suddenly, stepping over another body with a wince. Tony spotted movement through one of the doors and quickly took point in front of Steve, hands raised defensively. “Fighting Enhanced in a small space when all you have are scientists and agents with minimal training is gonna end in a bloodbath. Tell them all to retreat.”

“Cap—”

“They can’t get out once they reach the basement. It’s one-way. We’ll all meet them there, block them in and take them down before they can get anything important.” 

After a few more questions were exchanged, everyone seemed to agree on the course of action, and Tony heard Clint start barking out instructions to the people on the other side of the building that were still alive. Steve and Tony both hurried through to the stairwell, taking out anyone guarding their path with brutal efficiency and following the trail of destruction that led them further into the building. Tony felt his mind buzzing, and his body was edged with apprehension. There was a little niggling thought in his head that was making him think there was something not quite right about this. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was the lack of coordination to this enemy’s movements. They were just coming in one wave, which left them totally exposed at the back. It was sloppy, even for AIM.

But he didn’t have time to dwell on it. For now, he just had to stop them from getting their hands on any of the tech that was currently locked up in the storage facility down underground. That would be a nightmare. 

Cameras were down, but JARVIS could still read the heat signatures as they got closer. There was one significantly hotter than the others, which Tony was going to go ahead and presume was the Pyro. The other signatures that were above average had to be the other Enhanced. There were four of them. 

Five Enhanced Versus four Avengers? Piece of cake. Hopefully.

They met up with Clint and Nat on the ominously quiet basement stairwell. Tony couldn’t get any readings from the floor due to the anti-infiltration measures that had been put in place, but by the lack of gunfire or mayhem, he was going to go ahead and say it wasn’t swarming, at the very least. 

That was confirmed a second later. “They just...  _left_ ,” Natasha said, sounding confounded, “when the wave came, the Enhanced split off to the basement floor, but all the other targets just marched right past and through to the exits on the other side of the building.”

“Is Thor dealing with them?”

“We told him to look after the civilians in the front buildings first and foremost. There’s no one on the other side, and we can’t afford to spread him too thin in case they get behind him and start killing innocents.”

Steve cursed. “This isn’t right,” he declared, and Tony nodded his agreement. 

“There’s not much we can do about it now,” he said gruffly, “this is probably just a badly hashed-out plan to get one of the gizmos down here. Storm the building, hire out a few professional Enhanced to lead the march, then let them do their own thing while everyone else gets the hell outta dodge.” He shrugged and raised a repulsor toward the door. “Let’s just go in, see what they’re about, and then take them down.”

Everyone nodded. Not really many other options, after all. 

They made their way into the hallway, Tony taking point with Steve and Nat behind him and Clint watching their six. It was while they were halfway down the dimly lit corridor that the next blow hit, with Thor getting in touch with them via the comm, his voice grave and breathless. 

“There’s been another attack,” he said, the words crackled from the bad signal down in the underground, “on the other side of the city. Wrecking Crew. They’re in Times Square, and they’re not holding back.”

Tony’s eyes widened, and he heard Steve curse again. “Right,” the man said, clipped, “Thor, have you dealt with the situation up top?”

“All civilians are now safely evacuated and any enemies have been neutralised. Do you want me to fly over to Times Square?”

“You can’t take them all on alone,” Tony said, hesitating for a moment before looking behind to his team. “Call Bruce. Tell him we need him. Then let Happy know. He’ll go on babysitting duty.”

Everyone nodded. It was a sound call, and Thor promptly followed the order, signing off in order to instead get in touch with the other two men. The thought of leaving Peter alone when half the city appeared to be under siege was not something that sat well with Tony at all, but he knew that they needed all hands on deck if it was AIM  _and_ the Wrecking Crew on the loose in the city. Happy was more than capable of looking after him for an hour or two, anyway. 

It would be fine. He didn’t need to worry. This was the first mission out since they’d even found the boy- in fact, as far as Tony recalled, he’d never been without at least one Avenger in the tower since his arrival. So of course it was going to be difficult to acclimatize to leaving him. But Peter would be fine, and for now, Tony needed to keep his head in the game. They had a while to go before they were out of the danger.

 It just so happened that they passed a clock in the corridor in that moment, and Tony came face to face with the depressing realisation that it was only 2 in the afternoon. And like he’d said, they weren’t even close to being done yet. 

“I hate you,” he whispered to Steve as the man walked beside him, “You and your training exercises. I feel like I’m getting drowned by my own sweat in here.”

Steve pulled a slightly disgusted face. “Admittedly, it was unlucky that this all had to happen on the same day. But at least now you’re all warmed up for th—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish. A second later and with alarming speed, two men rounded the corner and barrelled straight into Steve, knocking him backward about ten feet.

This, Tony figured, was what Steve had been implying he would need to get warmed up for.

Tony spun, hands up to fire at them, but then Clint raised his bow and fired a shot off somewhere behind him, and Tony had to turn once more, spotting the next man who came around. This was the fire guy, by the looks of his glowing skin. Tony blocked his path. 

“Hi,” the man said pretty cheerfully, wasting no time as he summoned a huge ball of flame and then hurled it at Tony. “We haven’t met. I’m Cass.”

Tony gasped, feeling the heat as it warmed the armour plates. The temperature gauge started to rise up in his HUD. He moved his focus between observing the fire-guy and watching as yet another body rounded the corner. This one moved differently; there was a smoothness to his motions that gave it away even before Tony saw the sleek metal underneath his uniform. It was the robot one. Clint and Natasha were on him immediately, however, leaving Tony with the Pyro and Steve with the two speedsters.

Tony cocked his head at the man in front of him. “Johnny Storm isn’t going to be happy when he finds out he’s got a knockoff version of himself running around New York,” he declared as he lifted his repulsors and fired. 

The man only grinned, dropping into a roll and then slamming a molten fist into Tony’s chest, sending him backward again. “We have different skillsets,” Cass informed him, “I’m freelance. And prettier.”

“Wow. Confident for a guy about to get his ass beat.” Initiating the fire protocols in the suit, Tony felt as the nozzles underneath his shoulderplates extended, and a second later a plume of fire extinguisher was being sprayed in the direction of his assailant. 

The fight waged in the corridor, everyone busy hitting someone or another. Tony was aware of the fact that one of the Enhanced that he’d picked up on his scan wasn’t present, and he knew that he was going to have to wrap this up in here pretty quick before they could get their hands on something dangerous. There was enough science equipment and alien tech in here to start a damn war, after all.  

He checked back at Steve, watching him put his serum-enhanced reflexes to use as he dodged out of the way of a double attack from two high-paced enemies, body twisting and rolling like water. He’d already got a solid hit to the first one, but the second was still holding strong, keeping up with Steve’s pace and nipping out of the way of any hits before they could land. Even so, Tony didn’t doubt that Steve would come out on top any minute now. And Natasha and Clint seemed to be doing okay as well. The cyborg was strong, but the pair of Avengers had years of experience on their side, and after working with Tony for so long, they’d become used to the tricks of the robotic trade. 

His lack of concentration was paid for, however, when he missed a move from the Pyro and ended up in a molten-hot chokehold. Tony’s eyes bulged and he felt the heat instantly, his temperature gauge rocketing. As far as enforcements went, the neck-plates weren’t that thick in order to ensure maximum dexterity. They were enough to stop a regular man, or even an abnormally strong man from being able to constrict him, but they weren’t so great at holding up against the immense temperatures being inflicted upon them.

“Iron melts at 1500 degrees,” the man hissed in his ear, while Tony’s throat burned, “how long do you think this tin-can will last?”

“Longer than you,” Tony gritted, snapping out his wrist in a motion that unsheathed the blade hidden under his forearm. He twisted it backward and the man had to let go of him as he stumbled away from the attack, and Tony scrabbled for the release on the helmet before the boiling plates could do any more damage to his neck. He really hoped any burns he’d gotten were only first-degree.

Cass stepped forward again, but this time instead of continuing the fight, he passed Tony completely, nodding over to someone behind him. Tony looked, watching as the fifth and final Enhanced rounded the corner and sprinted straight past all of them. He got back to his feet and raised the repulsors, knowing that he no longer had his targeting system thanks to the lack of helmet, but figuring he was a good enough shot to get a hit nonetheless. Now they were getting further away, firing shots would be easier. As cool as Iron Man was, he tended to work far better in open space.

He lifted his arm, but then felt a sudden shove in his back and stumbled, noticing the two speedsters fly past him. Now the whole group were on one end of the corridor, backing off like they were retreating. Tony’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted his repulsors again, trying to get a decent hit. But the target he was aiming for- the bulletproof guy that hadn’t been present for most of the fight- dropped low, right before Tony fired. His hand splayed over the floor, leaving something there. A small device. 

It was only when the thing lit up and a thin, vertical sheen rapidly spread outward, extended from the floor to the ceiling, that Tony suddenly realised what was going on. That was an energy filter. Force-field, if you wanted to be crass about it. He knew that because SHIELD had pulled the box out of alien wreckage back last May and kept it here in storage ever since.

The next bullet Natasha fired off was promptly absorbed, turning into nothing more than potential energy. Silence fell.

“That was easier than I thought,” Bulletproof guy said after a moment, stepping back and looking across at the Avengers through the blueish energy field. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be responsible for like, saving the universe and stuff?”

_We’re trapped,_ Tony thought, glaring over at the other group. They were one the right side, where the one exit was. His first thought was that they’d probably rigged the entire basement floor to blow, but he quickly discarded that one. Once you left this corridor, everything beyond it was volatile enough to destroy the entire city, should it be tampered with. These guys didn’t look the type for that. 

“What do you want?” Hawkeye snapped at them, his arrow still drawn, ready for whatever. “What did you come here for? Not just to piss us off, surely?”

Flame Guy- Cass- stepped forward with a small shrug. “Oh, nothing, actually,” he admitted casually, “we were just hired to draw you in here and keep you there. Our employers told us where abouts in storage you guys were keeping the energy field, and that all we needed to do was put you on that side of it, and viola.” He turned, clapping his colleagues on the shoulders. “Well done guys. This was executed perfectly. Chinese food is on me tonight, ‘kay?”

Steve glanced Tony’s way, and Tony just shook his head minutely. “And now what?” He asked sharply. “You just go home, get a letter of recommendation from AIM, eat Chinese?”

Cass grinned. “Oh, no, we’ve gotta go help the Wrecking Crew first, keep Thor and Hulk busy until AIM get whatever it is that they want in your tower.” He paused, and then nodded. “ _Then_ we go home and eat Chinese, yeah. No need doing more than what our contract states, after all.”

The world seemed to slow for a moment or two as Tony’s mind sifted through the meaning of the words, found the overall conclusion in what all this was about. He landed on it slowly, steadily, in the way he always did. Logic first, reaction later. 

AIM hadn’t stormed SHIELD to get anything. They’d stormed SHIELD to draw the Avengers out and spread them thin, trapping whoever responded down here where there was no escape. They’d known one of them would stay behind in the tower, most likely Bruce, because he was only needed in emergencies, so they’d then arranged another strike- this time hiring the Wrecking Crew- and triggered that one off, forcing any free Avengers into action over there. Tony himself had told Thor to call for the Hulk before heading to Times Square. 

And that left the one thing that AIM had truly set all this up for. It left Peter, unguarded, in the one place where not a single Avenger could get to. It was a pretty well organized plan, if he was being honest. Not one Tony had ever seen coming.

They'd had been played. 

AIM were going to take Peter.

“No,” Tony said without even meaning to, his voice coming out raw and ragged as he took a step forward, “no, you can’t let them do this. You don’t understand--”

“Oh, I understand plenty,” Cass told him with a sickly smile, and Tony was going to throw up, his heart was going to stop, Steve was holding onto his arm so he wouldn’t step forward and get obliterated by the energy field but Tony was pushing against him blindly, unable to just stand there and do nothing as the team of mercenaries slowly backed off, sealing their fate without a second thought. “I understand that at the end of this, we’re all gonna be 40-thousand dollars richer, and you’re gonna be pretty fucking embarrassed. That’s good enough for me.”

“Tony, what the hell is—” Steve obviously came to the same conclusion right at that moment, because suddenly his breath caught and his eyes widened. Tony felt the pressure on his arm increase a hundred-fold, the armor creaking as Steve’s grip tightened. Tony wasn’t looking at him, but he didn’t need to in order to know that all the blood had drained from his face at once, turning him gaunt, pale, terrified. “No,” he said simply, copying Tony’s sentiment with a disbelieving voice. “Oh God. No.”

They were moving down the corridor, leaving the Avengers behind. They didn’t even care. “This was fun!” One of them called with a wave, “we should do it again sometime!”

Peter. Oh God.  _Peter_.

“Please,” Tony lurched forward, trying to catch one of their eyes. The amount of times Tony had ever begged in a situation involving his work-life were so few and far between that Tony could count them on one hand, but in that moment, he didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit. “Please, there’s a child in there. He’s just a boy, they’re going to take him, please, please don’t do this. His name is Peter. He’s just a baby, not even a year old. Please, I’ll do anything—”

All of them kept walking. They were going to go around the corner in a few seconds. They weren’t going to listen. 

“Oh, and before you try and laser your way through the ceiling or whatever,” Cass turned for a second, raising his finger and then pulling a little square device from his back pocket. “You should really  _watch your back,_ if you catch my drift.” His thumb pressed down on the trigger he had in his hand, and a second later, Tony heard a high-pitched beeping that started slow, and then rapidly began progressing in speed. Tony was aware enough to realise that it was on the back of his armour. The fucking speedsters must have put it there as they’d shoved him out of the way. 

He had seconds. He had seconds and he couldn’t even  _think_ , he couldn’t move, it was all happening too fast and he knew that usually it wouldn’t be a problem for him to keep up, but  _they were going to take Peter—_

“JARVIS, eject.” Steve’s voice was loud in Tony’s ears, jarring. His hands vanished, and Tony felt the constraints of the armour peel away from his back, his chest, his arms. Hands grabbed him, yanked him down the corridor. Someone was shouting ‘RUN’. It sounded like Natasha.

He forced his legs to work, running with Steve as the man raised his shield behind them and threw the two of them forward, just as an explosion ripped through the hall and a concentrated detonation hit the armor Tony had been standing in only seconds ago.

He shut his eyes, shoulder lighting up in pain as it hit the concrete hard. They both rolled, Tony feeling the cool lines of Steve’s shield on his back. 

Peter. Peter. Peter. 

This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t have failed him so soon. They’d promised to look after him. 

His head pounded. He wondered whether he’d hit it on the way down. 

“Steve,” he breathed, feeling the other man next to him when they settled on the floor, “we have to… call Thor. Comm… he’ll be—”

“He’s not responding,” Steve responded shakily. Tony was unsure how long it had been since he’d gone down. Maybe he’d blacked out. “I think we’re too far down in the… He’s not fucking… fuck.  _Fuck_.”

“Calm down, both of you.” Clint sat up off the floor, wiping his face and then pulling Tony’s arm hastily. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

“We can’t—”

“We are in one of the largest alien technology storage facilities in the US. We absolutely can.” This time it was Natasha speaking, her voice clipped, harsh. She was glaring at Tony because it was easier than letting herself look afraid, and she quickly turned her head back in the direction of where they’d just run from, analysing what she could see. “Your suit’s pretty destroyed, but it’s not totally dead. You probably would have survived even if you’d stayed in it. Can you cannibalize the parts? We need to get a message to Thor, or Bruce, or anyone who can hear us.”

Tony didn’t say anything, and it looked like Natasha was going to try and slap him out of it by the way her hand rose angrily. But he woke up on his own, scrambling up to his feet and then shutting his eyes in order to think, long and hard about everything that he knew was down in these floors. He just needed a way to get to Peter. Anything. Working audio transmitter with a strong enough signal, a fucking  _spaceship_ if it was useable, Tony didn’t care. 

Oh god, he should have known this was coming. He should have done more. They were going to take Peter and they were going to do God knows what and it was all his fault. And now he needed to think, needed to _use his fucking mind_  and he couldn’t even do that, he felt lightheaded, sick to his stomach with fear and panic and—

He felt strong hands curl around his biceps, the fingers splaying over his back. He looked up as Steve knocked their foreheads together. “Breathe,” the man whispered softly, “breathe, relax, just think. We’re going to get to him. It’s going to be okay. Just breathe.”

He gasped, made a small noise. Something was wrong with him. His vision was getting hazy, he was—

“ _Breathe_ , Tony.”

Right. Breathing. 

He heard Clint mutter something about going back and checking out what was left of the armour, and Natasha informed them she’d start searching through the storage, leaving just Steve and Tony standing in the corridor, forehead to forehead as Tony frantically wracked his brains. He refused to acknowledge the panic. It wasn’t going to help. Instead, he focused on Steve. The way his back was hunched. How his hands were soft against Tony’s skin, but lined with insurmountable tension that showed he was holding so much back. The way his breathing hitched up and down, like he couldn’t even stop it. If Tony didn’t think of something, Steve was going to start trying to punch his way through the steel-enforced walls. 

A second passed in which Tony considered approximately 189 different scenarios and outcomes before landing on the one that he thought could work. He opened his eyes and grabbed Steve’s hand. 

“We need to find storage box 237,” he said shakily, “and you need to get ready to start climbing.”

 

______

 

Twenty minutes. 

 

That was how long it took before they managed to get out, find somewhere with a signal and comm in to Thor to tell him to get back to the tower by any means necessary. Thankfully, every part of the escape itself had gone perfectly, with Tony’s memory serving him well enough to be able to lead them over to the particle displacer that SHIELD had taken in from a fight a few months prior, and subsequently allowing them to create a hole in the seven-meter-thick ceiling. After that, it had simply been a question of Clint notching the right arrow and lodging it into the ceiling of the next floor above them, with the wire attached to it allowing them all to scramble up.

But when they’d finally gotten enough signal to reach Thor, the God had painstakingly told them he couldn’t leave the scene without putting hundreds of people at risk. And although Tony had wanted to say something stupid, something cruel about how  _Peter’s safety was worth more than them,_  Steve had cut in with a brisk confirmation, and said that they’d make their own way there. Tony had watched his hands shake minutely before he’d pulled them behind his back, body taut as a bow. 

Next, they’d contacted JARVIS. Or, at least, they’d tried to. Tony had called the tower, but received no response from his infallible AI. 

And that was when he knew it was over.

They’d disabled JARVIS. Tony was going to guess at a blanket EMP, which would only work for a few minutes before JARVIS’ systems rebooted, but even then, it would only be basic functions that came online. He wouldn’t be able to establish communication with anyone for another twenty minutes or so.

“They’re going to take him away,” Tony mumbled, feeling himself edge dangerously close to hysterical as he looked blankly at Natasha, then Steve, shaking his head minutely, “they’re going to take him and do... and we can’t… we can’t—”

“We’ll find a vehicle.” That was Steve, always unwilling to give up, even when Thor and Hulk couldn’t make it over, even when they’d been stuck down in a fucking basement sitting on their useless asses for twenty minutes while someone or something had undoubtedly stormed their tower and taken their little boy from them. “Hawkeye, Nat, is there-- is there  _anything_ we can use in this building that’ll take us to Park Avenue as quickly as possible?”

“There’s a chopper up top,” Hawkeye said with a curt nod, beginning to lead them off in the direction of the roof. Tony rushed along with them, but in his mind, he already knew what they would find once they made it to the Avengers Tower. 

 

Still, though. 

That didn’t make seeing it any easier. 

 

Tony was one of the first to get in, trailing close behind Steve as the man rammed his way into the Penthouse floor. Every last one of them had been frantic on the journey, dealing with the panic in their own separate ways, but now, it was all over. Tony saw it all instantly; the trail of destruction mapped out right in front of him, starting at the window they’d blasted through, marching into the living room where tables and couches had been upturned, boot-marks had been imprinted, and finishing at the opposite end of the floor, where Happy’s body lay.

Tony froze on the spot, unwilling to step further. Unable to. He didn’t want to know. He couldn’t know. His heart already felt ruined, but now that he was looking at one of his closest friends as they lay unmoving on the floor, he didn't think it was even in his chest anymore. It was somewhere in his shoes, leaking out of the soles. Vile and coagulating. 

Not Happy. Please, please not Happy. Not him too. 

He watched, numb, as Natasha swiftly hurried over to him, her face tight, edged with a desperation he’d only ever seen her show once or twice before. Clint came to stop by Tony’s side, grabbing his arm, saying words Tony couldn’t hear. Steve was gone; probably to check the other floors. Still desperately clinging on to hope that wasn’t even there anymore. Delusion was the more accurate word. 

“He’s alive,” Natasha declared loudly, her fingers slipping from Happy’s neck and her shoulders sagging. Tony just blinked and nodded. He couldn’t fathom up an emotion. All he could see was the damage around him. The proof of his failure. 

They had Peter. That was all that was going around in his head. AIM had Peter. 

Tony stared at the window, absently calculating the force they would have needed to break through it, the size of the unit that would have stormed through judging by the width of destruction. The weapons they must have used. He saw where Happy was positioned; kneeling behind the bar on the far end of the living room. He’d had time to work out where was safest to stay. He’d probably even had time to put Peter somewhere else, before coming back to try and fight them off. Had Happy been holding Peter at the time, he probably wouldn’t have survived. But going by the empty gas cannister that he could see tucked away next to the skirting board, they must have spotted him holding the defensive position and simply chosen to gas him, rather than kill him.

Tony made a mental note to be unfathomably grateful for that later. 

He watched Steve walk back into the room with them slowly. His eyes were dead, jaw wound so tight that Tony thought he was crushing his teeth. Clearly his searching had led to nothing. Slowly, he pulled off his cowl with shaking fingers, looking over to the shattered glass windows that were currently gusting cold air into the room. Then he turned to the nearest wall, paused for a second, and put his fist through the solid concrete again and again and again until Natasha dragged him away with soothing words and small pleas.

Steve looked down at his bloody hand as it dripped onto the white tile. “He’s gone,” he said softly, the words edged with a mild disbelief that made Tony think of out-of-season snow showers or sudden deluges on an otherwise sunny day. He turned his gaze to Tony across the room, speaking only to him this time. “They took our baby boy.”

Tony could only nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oopsies,,, let the Primal Desire to leave everything i write on a cliffhanger take over,,,, 
> 
> take a look at my kofi (itsallavengers) to find out how to get the next chapter!


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